Hack
by Solo Ensemble
Summary: Spinelli Jason's sidekick and Elizabeth Sonny's former legal ward go head-to-head as they compete for the job of head computer geek for the organization. A Liason story with Single Sonny, Nerdy Spinelli, and a Bevy of Bodyguards thrown in for fun.
1. Chapter 1

**Note **– As all of you know, I don't do angst well. I just don't do it. I'm more inclined toward…silly. So this fic is going to be silly – how could it not, when Spinelli plays a supporting role? If you do not like silly and you do not like AU, you will not like this story and I advise you not to read further because chances are, it'll annoy you. Everything shall hopefully be explained as you go along, so I won't waste time making a list of things you need to know. Thank you to Julie/Jeweltones for providing the first line.

**Hack 01**

There were some things good girls just weren't supposed to do.

Carefully attaching a tiny camera mounted in a serial number sticker to the thermostat in Penthouse II was one of them.

But thankfully, Elizabeth Imogene Webber had never been a good girl – so far as she could remember, barring the time before the accident, of course.

It was a tiny camera, the smallest she had ever come across in all her years working with Stanford Johnson and his fine gang of tech wizards. Stan had made it for her, along with a bunch of other such handy gadgets, for her twenty-first birthday two months earlier. He'd included a discreet switchblade money clip with a built-in camera able to take 72 MB of pictures before running out of RAM, a flashlight-tape recorder that looked exactly like a pen, several wiretaps of assorted sizes and capabilities, and a handful of little cameras and put them all together in a fancy black case, like a miniature briefcase, and presented it to her at the party Sonny threw with a shiny pink bow on top.

Oh, he'd be pissed at her for using her first camera bug to tap the legendary Jason Morgan's penthouse!

Elizabeth smoothed the metal-backed sticker bearing a serial number and fine print instructions about thermostat operations onto the wall right above the push-button thermostat, being careful not to press on the miniscule circuitry mounted therein. Taking a step back, she studied her work. From what she heard of Jason from his best friend, he was an intelligent man with a keen, keen eye for detail.

But the sticker looked official in all its capacities and Elizabeth was satisfied that even a man with Jason Morgan's finely tuned sensibilities wouldn't be able to spot it.

She wasn't sure why she was taking such great care to infiltrate the penthouse this way – the same penthouse she was being thrown out of at moment's notice just because Sonny's stupid best friend called that morning and said he was coming home. As if that wasn't bad enough, he was bringing an _associate_.

Something about the situation rubbed her the wrong way, and before leaving the penthouse she had occupied for the past six years as the sole occupant, Elizabeth had taken care to install the little bug. It could very well turn out to be a bust, but more than half a decade spent as Sonny Corinthos's legal ward taught her to act preemptively. The ethics of the situation didn't really bother her – after all, she'd spent the past few years in the care of a man who kept her cell phone wiretapped just so he could rest easy knowing that she wasn't out getting herself into any danger.

If there was nothing worth seeing in regards to Jason Morgan and his _associate_, she would disconnect the camera from her laptop, retrieve it from the penthouse that was no longer hers, and that would be that. If there was something interesting going on…well, she'd know about it before anyone else, wouldn't she? And she'd know what to do.

Everything was coming up Corinthos, and she liked it.

"Elizabeth? You almost done, sweetheart? I'm going to get all your stuff moved upstairs, so you might want to come over and tell us where everything goes."

She glanced at the open door upon hearing her former legal guardian's voice. Even though she had recently turned 21 and was no longer legally his ward anymore, Sonny Corinthos was more her father than her biological one – the one that couldn't even stand to be in the same room with her when she woke up and couldn't remember who he was.

"Coming, Sonny! I'm almost done!"

She glanced at the camera again, this time from over by the closet, and was very pleased to see that it looked as inconspicuous as any of the other permanent fixtures in the now bare penthouse. All of her stuff had been hastily crammed into suitcases and boxes – by herself and Sonny's men, which was a trip, especially when Ritchie grabbed a box and accidentally found himself staring down into her underwear drawer – and was now across the hall in her guardian's penthouse.

Sonny was waiting for another one of his tenants to move out within the next week and after Penthouse V had been cleaned and repainted and refurnished, she would be moving in. Mr. Corinthos, mobster and racketeer extraordinaire, had insisted ever since she came into his life that a young woman her age should have her own private living quarters – it was only proper. His propriety always gave her such a kick.

"Hey, Toothpick." Max Giambetti rapped on the doorframe and grinned her way. "You ready to go? The Boss Man wants to make sure that we get your stuff squared away upstairs before dinner."

"Onward and upward, Maximillian," she shrugged, taking his offered arm and letting him escort her, fancy-style, to Sonny's penthouse across the hall. "I hope your friend Mr. Morgan enjoys Penthouse II as much as I did."

The bodyguard sneaked a sly glance at her. "You left him a few mementos, didn't you?"

He was most likely referring to the rat poison she'd left in the kitchen cupboard and all the artificial flowers she'd purposely set up on all flat surfaces in the master bedroom, and Elizabeth smiled. "Couldn't resist. We'll think of it as a little housewarming gift, won't we, Max?"

Sonny was waiting for her by the door, holding one of her favorite purple lamps that she'd bought when he'd taken her to India that one time. "I can't believe you brought your pornographic monkey lamp! This thing is _not _coming into my penthouse."

Elizabeth laughed and handed the souvenir off to Max. "Better go put this in Penthouse II, bud. Maybe Jason'll like it."

* * *

It was about ten o'clock at night, which meant that Elizabeth was out and about in Port Charles doing whatever it was that girls her age did. He'd never quite figured it out.

Sonny glanced at his watch and slowly walked over to the wet bar. Waiting was the _worst_. He hadn't seen Jason in about five or six years, and now that his best friend was presumably due any minute, Sonny found that he just couldn't handle the waiting very well. Without the guards or Elizabeth to keep him company, every passing second was enough to drive him crazy.

He poured himself some brandy and swirled it in the glass, finding it less appetizing than he normally would have. Still, he sipped it as he wandered his living room, taking care not to trip over the charger for Elizabeth's laptop. She had left the thing charging in his living room instead of upstairs in her temporary bedroom like he'd asked, but that was okay. He could never stay mad at the girl for anything, and certainly something as trivial as this wouldn't even register.

Carefully, he picked up his ward's most prized possession in the world and carried it over to the fireplace. Gingerly, he set it down on the carpet by the electrical socket and backed away as if he was Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom. That had been one of Elizabeth's favorite movies when she was sixteen. She had a monster crush on Harrison Ford that, frankly, he still didn't get.

He glanced at his clock and then at the neat living room and foyer. He and Elizabeth had already cleared all of her stuff out of there and set it up, so he couldn't even busy himself with that. Her arsenal of clothes had been stowed away in two separate closets and her little knick-knacks were sitting in their boxes in his other spare bedroom. All of her old textbooks were in the home office that he so rarely used, and her toiletries and personal items had taken over the bathroom on the upper floor. She'd stay here for about a week or two – he couldn't get out of that, despite the fact that he thought it inappropriate for the two of them to live together – and then she'd be moving in right next door, Penthouse V.

He'd have his best friend across the hall and he'd have his daughter right next door. And then everything would go back to normal.

* * *

"-that guy at the main desk in the lobby? Dude, Stone Cold, he totally looked like Herman Munster! I almost called him Lurch but I didn't because you hit me before I could."

Jason was about to reply, something to the order of how he'd known Damien Spinelli long enough now to know when he needed to be hit, when he saw his best friend standing in the hallway by the elevator talking to Max.

Sonny looked over, bursting into a wide grin the instant he saw who it was. "Jason!"

Spinelli hopped out of the elevator, momentarily unnerved by the matching grin that his stoic protector now wore. The boy watched carefully as his Stone Cold and this new man – a short, mildly greased Pacino-DeNiro type – gave in and hugged, following the embrace up with several loud and most likely painful claps on the back.

"It's good to see you," the Godfather was saying, still pumping Jason's hand. "You look good."

"So do you," Spinelli's Stone Cold replied, his hand on his friend's shoulder as he turned toward Spinelli. "Sonny, this is the kid I was telling you about – Damien Spinelli. _This _is Michael Corinthos."

"I go by Spinelli," the boy said, instantly sticking out his hand.

Sonny shook it formally. "I go by Sonny."

"Just like James Caan," the boy replied, grinning proudly. "You're, like, totally Pacino-esque right now and I'm just digging the vibe here, dude. Okay, hold on, let me jive with it for a second – this is really just too awesome. My circuits are on temporary iconographic overdrive."

Sonny tilted his head and glanced at Jason. "What's he talking about?"

The enforcer shrugged. "Been keeping an eye on him for four years now and I still don't know half the time."

Sonny shrugged. "It's good to meet you, kid. I don't really know much about you. You guys met in Italy, though, right?"

Spinelli nodded. "Yes, Sir. Stone Cold found the Jackal – or maybe the Jackal found Stone Cold – on the outskirts of Rome and if I can be arrogant for a minute, the Jackal _totally _saved Stone Cold's butt by dumping on the baddies right before they pumped him full of lead and Stone Cold returned the favor by rescuing the Jackal from his rustic boredom and bringing him along on his grand adventures and we've been like Mario and Luigi ever since."

Sonny regarded the boy for a minute and then pulled Jason back a step. "Excuse us for a minute."

"Yes, of course, Pacinoesque," he replied happily, giddy all over at the thought of standing in the company of the two greatest racketeering minds on the East Coast.

Sonny motioned for Jason to come closer and the younger man obliged. "First…who's Stone Cold?"

Jason tugged on his ear. "I'm pretty sure that's me."

"And the Jackal?"

"That's what he likes to call himself."

Sonny shook his head briskly but continued anyway. "Okay, so who are the baddies?"

"They turned out to be Cera's men, but he uses that word to mean any enemy."

"Hm. Mario and Luigi?"

"I'm guessing some type of computer game."

"Ah. Rustic boredom?"

"He's an orphan and he lived in one of the rural villages surrounding Rome. He'd just run away from home to the city when we found each other, so when he says rustic boredom, he means most of his life."

Sonny smoothed a hand over his face. "Okay, okay, makes sense. But what's a Pacino-esque?"

His best friend tugged on his ears once more, this time apologetically. "I think that's what he wants to call you."

Sonny gawked, then shook his head, drawing Spinelli's attention. "No, no, no, you're not calling me that."

"Not calling you what, Pacino-esque?" Spinelli wanted to know.

"That – that Pacino-esque thing," Sonny replied, wagging a finger in the boy's face. "That's not my name and I don't like it."

Spinelli appeared flustered. "…The Jackal meant no disrespect, Pacin- I mean, Sir-"

"My name is Michael Corinthos Junior," Sonny continued, giving him a stern look. "Sonny for my friends, and I don't like being called anything else. You will call me…"

"Mister Corinthos?" the boy guessed hopefully.

"-_Sir_," the mobster emphasized. "Got it?"

"Got it, Mister Corinthos-Sir," Spinelli nodded. "You're the boss."

Jason had been doing his best not to smirk this little exchange and was relieved when Sonny turned back to him with a more official air.

"So Spinelli's your associate, right?"

He nodded. "Yeah. Been with me for four years, saved my life on occasion."

"-But not as often as Stone Cold rescued the Jackal," the boy was kind enough to point out.

Sonny acknowledged him with a nod and looked at Jason for confirmation. Jason shrugged. "He calls himself my tech support – good with a computer, helps me out all the time."

"Good to hear it, good," Sonny nodded. "So your associate is rooming with you, right? We got the penthouse all cleared out for you two, and if you need anything, the guys only need to hear you say the word-"

"What do you mean, you got it all cleared out?" Jason wanted to know. "When I was leaving, you said you wouldn't be renting it out."

"I didn't," Sonny answered slowly. "But-"

"Iced coffees for all! Max, I got extra caramel on yours so – oh." Elizabeth Webber, two shopping bags on her arm and four iced coffees balanced in a paper tray in her hand, stopped and stared at the two newcomers in the hallway. "The Messiah has arrived."

"Elizabeth…" Sonny warned, doing his best not to smile at her sharp tongue. "Be nice."

"What?" she asked innocently, handing the three coffees off to Max after grabbing her own. "What did I say? I'm just rejoicing in the Second Coming."

She let the handles of her bags slip down into her hand and moved over to Sonny's side, appearing to take her rightful place at his right hand. For some reason, that irked Jason as he raked his eyes over the girl. She was young – very young, it seemed – with pale, pale skin and dark hair that she had currently styled into fat curls. She wore a denim miniskirt that came down to her knees with a soft pink tee that spelled out _pretty in pink_, and a pair of ballerina flats completed the look. Dressed in flat shoes, she only barely came up to Sonny's shoulder and his best friend was _short_.

And now, as she stood possessively behind Sonny's right arm, she appeared to be studying him with the same critical eye as she sipped her ridiculous drink, and Jason didn't appreciate it. Behind him, Spinelli was tittering.

"Dude, Stone Cold, it's a girl," he chortled, lightly punching Jason's shoulder from the back.

The girl rolled her eyes. "I take it you've never seen one of us up close before. Watch out – we bite."

"_Elizabeth_."

The little waif actually had the sense to look chagrined. "Sorry." But as soon as Sonny looked away satisfied, all remorse left those sapphire eyes and she looked at the two new men again, tilting her head in silent challenge.

"So this is the BFF and the 'associate,' I take it."

Sonny nodded and placed a hand on her back. "Guys, this is Elizabeth Webber. Elizabeth, this is Jason – remember, I told you about him?"

"How could I forget?" the girl muttered, whisking her bangs out of her face.

"And this is Damien Spinelli. He goes by his last name."

Jason watched Elizabeth wrinkle her nose. "Spamoni?"

"Spinelli," the boy corrected politely.

She tipped her head to the side. "Spaghetti?"

"Spinelli," he repeated patiently.

Elizabeth's lips tightened, a sign of conviction. "Spinoodly."

"_Spin-elli_," Jason replied hotly, knowing she was doing it on purpose.

The girl beamed. "Oh, _Spinelli_. Why didn't you say so?"

Jason's eyes narrowed as he stared incredulously at her. "Who are you, again?"

"My name's Elizabeth," she replied, leaning closer to conspiratorially add, "I go by _Elizabeth_."

Jason wasn't amused, and Spinelli wasn't without curiosity. "So, you live on this floor, too?"

She nodded and waved her hand back at the open door to Penthouse IV, pausing to slurp her almost depleted drink. "Yeah. I live here."

Jason's eyes widened and he looked straight at Sonny, who shuffled his feet awkwardly. Spinelli, on the other hand, didn't have a filter between his brain and his mouth, prompting him to ask, "Oh, cool, so are you Mister Corinthos Sir's girlfriend? Or the Missus Mister Corinthos Sir? I don't see a ring."

"Oh, we're definitely a pair, all right," Elizabeth replied, leaning coyly into Sonny's side. "He's my guy, my fella. There's nothing about this fine specimen of a man that I don't know. We've been together for _years_, you know. We're definitely red-hot lovers."

This last part she said while running a finger down Sonny's cheek as the older man practically wrestled to free himself from her iron grip.

Jason stared at his best friend, wondering why he was red and sputtering furious nonsense, while Spinelli looked at Elizabeth with wide eyes. "Wow. Really?"

Elizabeth pulled a face. "What are you, sick? No, of course not! Gross."

"Oh," Spinelli nodded, pulling back. "Sure. I knew it all along."

"So who are you?" Jason pressed. The name Webber was uncomfortably familiar. "I know I've heard-"

"She's my ward," Sonny interrupted, surprising the two newcomers. "Elizabeth became my legal ward at the age of fifteen and she's lived in Penthouse II for about as long. She's staying with me for the week before Penthouse V is cleaned up and then she'll be taking that one."

Jason's eyes darted over to the bored brunette. Sonny had mentioned a young girl about six years ago that had run into some trouble, but he'd never told him that he'd taken her on as a _ward_. This was unbelievable – bordering on ridiculous.

"So you lived in this penthouse?" Spinelli asked aloud. "How is it? Nice? Lots of rooms?"

"Better ask Jason," she replied sweetly. "It's his, after all. So, Spin-elli, what's your story? We've heard your name but we don't know anything about you. What's your deal?"

The boy puffed out his chest. "I am Damien Spinelli, also known as the Jackal, O Vivacious One. I'm a boy genius extraordinaire with the computer – there's nothing I can't do. I grew up in Toscanagna, a hick-town outside of Rome and then fell in with Stone Cold completely by accident, and he beneficently took me under his wing. Stone Cold and I have been traversing Eurasia, all the way from the moors of Scotland to the bomb shelters in Sarajevo; wherever he goes, I go. And now his hometown calls him home, and here I am."

"You grew up in Italy, huh?" Elizabeth asked, trying not to show too much interest. Italy was only her most favorite country in the world in the history of ever.

He nodded proudly. "That's the country where I've spent the most time. The least time I spent in…Spain. We were there for about three months and then we got the heck on out because the baddies were after us. Good food, though."

Elizabeth tilted her head and studied him. She absolutely loved to travel and thanks to Sonny, she had been able to visit just about every country on her wish list. And it looked like this Spinoodly character had built up an impressive travel log as well.

"Three months, huh? Did you speak the language already? Or learn it while you were there?"

"What language?"

"Pig Latin," she fired back automatically before Sonny poked her in the ribs. "Spanish, Spanish."

Spinelli blinked, trying to look innocent. "Do I speak Spanish?"

Elizabeth scowled. "Like, do you have good vocabulary? Can you conjugate?"

"I will if you'll conjugate with me," he leered, wriggling his eyebrows and thrilled that he had gotten her to fall into the joke.

Jason, too, was smirking but Elizabeth wasn't pleased.

She smacked her coffee to Sonny's chest and reached out, fisting Spinelli's lapels and dragging him close to her face. "_Listen_, nerd-"

"Hey!" Immediately, Jason was between them, trying to separate the two. "Let him go."

"Jason, watch it," Sonny growled, pushing him away from Elizabeth. "Be careful – watch what you're doing."

"She was beating up on my nerd," he replied defensively. "I mean – Spinelli."

"I will punt your face into next week if you get in mine again," she promised, picking up her shopping bags and snatching her coffee from Sonny. "Got me, nerd?"

"Got it, Dragon," Spinelli saluted as the brunette stormed into the penthouse she temporarily occupied.

"She's not usually like this," Sonny offered lamely by way of apology. "So…you guys wanna come in for drinks? You old enough to drink, kid?"

Spinelli shook his head. "No, Mister Corinthos Sir. I'm nineteen…but that doesn't stop me."

"Nice try," Jason scowled, turning the young man around and shoving him toward the door of the newly vacated Penthouse II. "Put your stuff away and go to sleep. No music, no Gameboy, no _Zork Zero_ – bed. Go."

Sonny had to smirk as he watched the boy shuffle off. "You've got him trained pretty well."

Jason nodded. "I can get you a muzzle for yours if you want."

"Watch it, Morgan."


	2. Chapter 2

Hack 02

**Hack 02**

"You never told me you had a ward."

Sonny stilled in the middle of pouring Jason some of his finest brandy. He knew his best friend's beverage of choice was beer, but this batch was too good not to sample. "I told you about Elizabeth."

"You told me that there was an accident," Jason corrected. "And that a girl was shot twice – once in the head – because of you."

He winced even though those had been his own words. "Elizabeth's the girl."

"I figured," Jason muttered, accepting the glass he was handed. "When did it happen?"

Sonny glanced at the mantle, his eyes softening as his gaze came to rest on a picture of fifteen-year-old Elizabeth. Her hair was short, just reaching her chin, and she was wearing a black knee-length skirt and a cranberry collared blouse. She rested her head on his shoulder and he had his hand cupping her elbow, and the two of them were sitting behind matching glasses of red wine at their private table at the No Name. That was the night she had signed the papers that made him her legal guardian.

"Six years ago this July eleventh."

He said it with the reverence of a treasured anniversary, a fondly remembered birthday. Jason's brows rose; he remembered getting a call from his best friend in early June – or was it late May? – of that year while he was in Oaxaca. All he had been told was that Sonny had narrowly escaped an assassination attempt…at the expense of a fifteen-year-old child. He remembered how his best friend's voice shook as he briefly recounted the details of the girl's condition – a girl exactly half his age, alone ever since she opened her eyes and found the world strange and new, forgotten.

It wasn't the first time he'd heard such remorse in Sonny's voice. "Exactly two months after Brenda."

The mobster bowed his head, unable now to look at the small picture of the only other brunette that sat above his fireplace. "May eleventh. Two months."

They hadn't started this conversation so that they could brush up on their addition. Sonny always lapsed into melancholia when Brenda's name was mentioned, and Jason didn't want him to fall into that again – not tonight.

"So you took care of her."

The statement, sounding more like a question, roused Sonny. "Yeah," he got out, running a hand through his curls, which were just now beginning to rebel against the hair product that kept them in place all day.

"She was so young," Sonny sighed, lowering himself into his favorite olive green armchair. "Fifteen years old – just a kid. Half my age at the time. And when she woke up and couldn't remember anything about her family…"

He didn't want to get into it in too much detail: to Jason, it would be like reciting his own life story.

His best friend tilted his head to the side. "Webber – wait, Steve Hardy's family? Those Webbers? I knew her name sounded familiar: she's related to Rick and Jeff and the Spencers?"

Sonny nodded. "Daughter of Jeff Webber, granddaughter of Audrey Hardy, cousin of Laura Spencer. They fought me tooth and nail when Alexis and I tried to transfer guardianship."

What he really wanted to ask was why Sonny fought so hard, but Jason settled for a non-committal, "Yeah?"

He nodded, having taken the bait. "I knew I had to get her away from those people – it was like the Quartermaines all over again. The human brain's a strange thing – I was the only one she remembered from before the accident. She remembered serving me coffee at Kelly's and talking about a short story she was working on and how seeing me made her think that one of her characters had come to life off the pages. She remembered me – just me. And then the accident happened, right outside of Kelly's when she was coming to tell me I'd left too big a tip.

"I felt like she needed me to stick around to talk some sense into her parents, so I tried. They were talking about boarding schools and institutions and taking her to England and the whole time, this poor kid has no idea what was going on…it was like you, all over again."

There. He'd said it.

And as Sonny Corinthos watched carefully, suspiciously, the world didn't shatter.

Jason nodded. "So you got her out."

"Had to pay off just about everyone down the line," Sonny chuckled. "And had to pay Alexis triple overtime, and she was _still _mad at me. But it worked. We got Elizabeth away from the Webbers and she recovered and settled into a…somewhat normal life."

Jason smiled at that, more for Sonny's benefit than anything else. It was clear that over the past six years, his best friend had become attached to the little waif. And since he had been mildly upset at what transpired in the hallway a little while ago, Jason decided it would be nice – for a change – to humor him a little. After all, he hadn't seen his mentor in about six years; it wouldn't be too painful to feign interest in the kid.

"Tell me about her."

Sonny's eyes brightened, just as Jason had thought they might. "She's a real good kid, Jason, she really is. Never given me any trouble – well, not too much. And she's always trusted me completely, which, let me tell you, makes everything much easier. She recovered very well from the accident – she used to be slower, used to mix up her words sometimes and say things like 'Judas Christ' when she got mad at me, and her movements used to be a little jerky while she was going through all the physical therapy, but now you can't even tell."

He nodded. It was true – based on her display by the elevator, Elizabeth Webber appeared to be just like any other girl her age.

"I hired private tutors for her and she passed the GED along with the rest of the kids her age," he continued proudly. "She's a smart one. She went to PCU and decided to major in English – got her B.A. Now she works for an online 'zine – that's what they call magazines now – and helps me out whenever I need her. They say her readers love her sense of humor – but I gotta warn you, she says a lot of what she says just for shock value. She likes to keep us all on our toes, and it helps that she's the only girl at our organization. She lived in your penthouse for six years, actually, and I feel like I should get her a place of her own, away from Harborview, but I like having her around, close by."

Jason nodded again. It was understandable. This was probably the part where he was expected to say something nice about the waif, but he couldn't really think of anything so he kept quiet. Thankfully, his own little sidekick chose that moment to barge into Penthouse IV clutching a very strange blunt object to his chest.

"Hey! Look what I found in my room!" He brandished the object excitedly. "A wooden monkey lamp – you can see their balls! I bet it has magic powers. Can I keep this?"

"That's Elizabeth's," Sonny answered immediately, standing up to relieve Spinelli of the distasteful thing despite his previous edict for its banishment. "Better give that to me. She got this when we went to India three years ago."

"Oh, sure thing, Mister Corinthos Sir," the boy nodded, handing it right over. "Can you do me a favor and wipe off my fingerprints? Wouldn't want the Dragon to find out I touched her treasured possessions and take retaliatory action."

Sonny frowned but Jason couldn't help laughing. "Okay, you showed us the monkey lamp. Now go to bed. Go."

"When are you coming?"

"I'll come back when I come back – it's got nothing to do with you. Go." Spinelli cast him a beaten look and then did as he was told, softly shutting the door behind him. Jason shook his head. "Kid has father issues."

"I see that," Sonny nodded, stroking his chin softly. "Seems harmless, though."

Jason agreed. "Simple kid – a little excitable, but a good kid. Real perceptive, even though he hides it well."

Sonny hid his smirk and rehashed an old trick. "Tell me about him."

* * *

Sonny Corinthos awoke the next morning to find that he was being given the silent treatment. Elizabeth mumbled something incoherent when he asked her if she slept well; she snorted when he said he hoped that he and Jason hadn't kept her up; she ignored the peace offering in the form of the pornographic monkey lamp; and she responded to the morning's reactionary interrogation with a series of grunts.

Well, enough was enough. After six years of taking care of her, Sonny knew exactly how to handle the little brunette's mild tantrum.

She was sitting on the couch in the living room, already dressed for the day and thumbing through her worn copy of _White Teeth_ for a little of Zadie Smith's early morning wisdom. Even though Elizabeth's day consisted of sitting at her desk – or sometimes on the sofa – with her laptop and penning her series of columns and editorials and editing print posted on the server by other reporters, she liked to keep to a schedule and actually dress as if she were going out to work. His girl didn't putter around the penthouse in her pajamas all day; she was disciplined and focused and sensible and right now, she was angry with him.

Sonny left his empty glass of orange juice on the dining table and marched over to the sullen girl sitting on the couch. He plucked the book from her fingers, ignoring her protests as he tossed it into the magazine rack, and sat down on the coffee table. Elizabeth frowned darkly when he grasped her chin and forced her to look up at him.

"Okay, sweetheart, what's wrong?" He kept his voice firm but kind; there was something about that voice that had her immediately confessing her feelings every time he used it.

Elizabeth's frown grew darker, if that were at all possible, and her brows furrowed deeply. She remained silent for a long time and then, as Sonny's gaze leveled with hers and became more probing, found herself blurting out, "How come you never told Jason about me?"

Aha. There it was.

"What do you mean? I told Jason about you."

Her lower lip stuck out in a pout, just as it did when she was younger and cross with him. "No, you didn't. He didn't know my name, he didn't know you were my guardian, he didn't know I lived in Penthouse II…before he called and made me move out, the jerk."

The last part was muttered under her breath so that Sonny wouldn't hear, and Elizabeth hunkered back into the couch and waited for his explanation.

Sonny smoothed a hand over his face, buying some time as he formulated a response. "You're right. I didn't tell Jason that I adopted you."

"Did you forget?"

He smiled and Elizabeth bit her lip, knowing the words had sounded stupid as they were coming out. "No, I didn't forget."

She screwed her mouth up to the side. "Did you not want to?"

Sonny shook his head. "It wasn't that. It's just that – you remember everything I told you about Jason, right?"

Elizabeth nodded instantly. Over the years, Sonny had filled her with all kinds of information regarding his best friend. She suspected that she knew Jason Morgan just as well as he did by virtue of Sonny's remarks and stories alone. "Yeah. His brother AJ got drunk and wrapped his car around a tree with Jason in the passenger seat."

"That's right," Sonny nodded pedagogically. "He lost all of his memory that night and woke up without knowing anyone. I gave him a job, the two of us became friends, and we've been partners ever since."

"It's a lot like what happened to me," she shrugged, pulling her legs up on the couch underneath her.

Sonny nodded emphatically. "Exactly. It's _exactly _like what happened to you, only you somehow remembered what happened just before the accident."

Elizabeth had to smile. "You went all mobular when one of PCU's finest frat boys got fresh with me."

He grimaced, not particularly fond of that portion of the exchange. "You were just a kid – it was disgraceful."

Sonny shook his head and braced a hand on the couch, turning his body so that he could sit next to her. "Do you know why I put you in the penthouse across the hall?"

"Because it was close."

"Because that's where Jason used to live," Sonny corrected softly, shrugging when her eyes widened. "He had just left for Cuba a week before, and a month earlier, Brenda died. My home was empty, and so was Jason's. I didn't think it was right for you to live with me – people were already talking, that was the last thing you needed – and I didn't want to send you away anywhere else. So I moved you into Penthouse II to…"

"Fill a void," she suggested, casting a glance at her abandoned paperback and absently marveling at the inadvertent dose of true morning wisdom. "Rebuild a family?"

"Something like that," he allowed.

"And you didn't tell Jason because…" A slow smile spread across her lips. "You didn't want him to be jealous."

Sonny gawked at her. "That's not – I wouldn't put it-"

But Elizabeth already had the idea firmly planted in her head. "Oh, my gosh – you didn't tell Jason that I was living in his penthouse and busy being your sidekick because you knew it would make him jealous!"

She let out a laugh and leaned over to kiss his cheek as Sonny scowled at the indignity of it all. "Michael Corinthos, you are officially the sweetest man alive and I'm sorry I wasn't talking to you. It's just so _nice _that you don't want to make your best friend jealous over little old me!"

Sonny reached out and took her wrists in his hands, waiting until her chuckles diminished. "Sweetheart, I know you didn't want to move out of Jason's penthouse and I should have thought of that when I was moving you in, but that was the only one available on this floor and I wanted you nearby, so I didn't care. It's technically Jason's penthouse – he owns it. But I promise everything will settle back down soon and soon it'll be normal again."

She sighed and shifted on the couch, but Sonny wasn't done.

"Until then, can you do something for me?" His obsidian eyes searched hers earnestly. "Can you try to be nice? Can you cool it with the remarks? And can you please stop teasing Spinelli?"

"I was going to at least make an effort on the first two, but you lost me on the third."

"Elizabeth."

"Sonny, the kid's a total dweeb! I can't believe we have to be neighbors!" Elizabeth huffed, clearly displeased. "Seriously, you can't even understand what he says half the time! Who talks like that? But I guess it didn't matter since he's been tagging along with Jason for the past four years. Your BFF still hasn't mastered polysyllabic communication; Spinelli and he probably communicated with sign language, like Koko the gorilla. Drink drink apple cup now drink. What masterful orators!"

"What?"

The two of them looked over at Jason, who had let himself into the penthouse with Spinelli in tow, giving Sonny no time to chide his ward for her ranting. "What did you say?"

Elizabeth shrugged sweetly. "What did you hear?"

Jason rolled his eyes, knowing that the last thing he wanted was to get into it with her again. Behind him, Spinelli looked around the apartment with wide eyes. "Nice place you got here, Mister Corinthos Sir."

Elizabeth grimaced. "What's with the conflated moniker, nerd?"

The boy shrugged. "Mister Corinthos Sir has issued a proclamation that from now on, I only call him Mister Corinthos Sir. And whatever Mister Corinthos Sir wants, Mister Corinthos Sir-"

"Geez, I get it," Elizabeth interrupted, scoffing in his direction. "Well, you freaks and geeks can go about doing whatever it was you came over here to do, but I have to get to work. Sonny, is it okay if I set up at the dining table? I don't feel like taking Mister Perkins upstairs."

The mobster nodded, pointing Spinelli toward the muffin basket. "Sure thing, sweetheart. We probably won't be long. I might be going over to the warehouse in a little while, so when you're done, call me and we'll meet for lunch."

"Good deal."

Jason looked back and forth between the two of them. "Who's Mister Perkins?"

"That's what Elizabeth calls her computer," Sonny informed him helpfully, as if it wasn't the most ridiculous thing in the world.

Just as Jason was going to give voice to that sentiment, he saw Spinelli perk up. "You call yours Mister Perkins?" he asked Elizabeth as she set up nearby. "Cool! I call mine Princess Peach – you know, from Mario Brothers."

The brunette looked at him for ten solid seconds, unblinking, and finally snorted. "Nerd."

_"Elizabeth_."

She rolled her eyes in way of apology. "Sorry."

"No harm done, Vivacious One," Spinelli conceded happily. "That's a nice computer you've got there."

"Touch it and die," Elizabeth stated mildly. Abruptly, she set down her USB mouse and got up from the table. "I left my notes upstairs – I'll be right back."

Spinelli waited until she was on the landing before easing over to her computer and checking out the specs. "Ooh. Stone Cold, check it out."

Jason didn't turn around from his seat on the couch. "What?"

"This is nice. Even nicer than mine. Wow. What did the Vivacious One do to luck into such a fine piece of circuitry, I wonder?"

Sonny glanced blandly at the boy. "She turned another year older."

The boy's jaw dropped. "Niiiiice."

The mobster watched as Spinelli sat down and began clicking away with the mouse. "Hey – don't – don't mess around with it too much. Elizabeth has it set up just the way she likes-"

"No worries, Mister Corinthos Sir," Spinelli assured him.

"He's good with a computer," Jason agreed, relaxing on the couch and reaching for the morning paper. "Don't worry about him."

"I'm not worried about _him_, I'm worried about – listen, she'll be down any second, so…"

Just as Jason began to wonder why Sonny was picking on his friend, Spinelli started laughing. "Oh, my gosh, Stone Cold, you're not going to believe this. You know how I just said that this was the most awesome computer in the history of ever?"

"You mean two seconds ago?"

"-It's more like a glorified MP3 paper!" The boy turned the screen around, still laughing. "She's got all this great firepower at her fingertips, and what does she do? Fill it up with punk covers of classic eighties' songs! She's totally wreaking havoc on her memory, not to mention the speed of the processor!"

"Or maybe all those files are compressed kilobyte image protocols to make stupid nerds think that my computer contains one thing when it actually contains something else," Elizabeth replied coolly, descending down the stairs with a notebook and her portable MP3 player.

Spinelli let out a little yelp and jumped out of the seat as if it were on fire, standing by nervously as Elizabeth glared at him and moved to her chair.

"What did I tell you about touching my computer, nerd?"

"Sorry, Dragon."

"What?"

"Sorry for…braggin'." That _kind _of sounded like Dragon.

She frowned at him before dismissing him as entirely irrelevant. "Whatever. Back to your corner."

Spinelli moved over to the muffin basket and picked amongst the selection until Jason became annoyed and called him over. "You rang, Stone Cold?"

"I told you he was real good with computers, right?" Jason asked his best friend. Sonny nodded. "He can hack and code and do just about anything, and I wanted him to have a job in this organization."

Sonny stilled, and at the dining table, Elizabeth looked up from her daily column. "What?"

"He'll be our tech support," Jason answered, recalling the phrase that Spinelli often used. "Stan already does the gadgets; Spinelli can do the actual computer stuff."

Behind him, he heard Elizabeth slam down her precious Mister Perkins's lid. In two seconds, she was standing at his head, right behind his shoulder, breathing fire. "You think Spinelli can handle the computer work for this entire organization?"

Jason shrugged, not seeing how this was any of her business. "Yeah."

"The Jackal is very skilled, O Vivacious One," Spinelli nodded, barely managing to duck when Elizabeth swatted his head.

"The Jackal is going to be roadkill if he doesn't shut up," she hissed before turning to her mentor. "Sonny, do you believe this?"

Jason looked at his best friend, who appeared oddly troubled.

Elizabeth didn't wait for any response. "You actually think this one can handle it? He's just a baby!" She turned on Spinelli. "How about the age, nerd? What's the damage?"

"I'm nineteen," he replied, using a voice that was far too chipper for Elizabeth's liking.

The brunette burst out laughing and turned back to the two men, thinking her case closed. "Ha! Nineteen! He's just a baby!"

Jason arched a brow at her. "How old are you?"

Elizabeth tipped her chin up proudly. "I'm twenty-one."

At this, both Sonny and Jason burst out laughing and Elizabeth's haughty pride soon turned sour. "Cram it. You're both insane if you think he's up to this."

"This has nothing to do with you," Jason replied, giving her a long overdue stern look. There was a reason that his contact with women ever since the accident was limited to dark bedrooms – it was absolutely useless to try and do anything else with them. "I was talking to _Sonny_."

"This has _everything _to do with me," Elizabeth hissed.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," she shot back. "Because _I'm _the tech support for this organization."


	3. Chapter 3

**Hack 03**

"Because _I'm _the tech support for this organization. And there's no way the little nerd is going to take over _my _job."

Silence.

And then, Spinelli couldn't take it anymore.

Knowing that he was most likely signing his own death warrant but entirely beyond caring, the boy burst out laughing. He laughed so hard that he turned bright red. He laughed so hard that he had to grip the armrest of the couch to avoid falling over and even then, he almost did.

Elizabeth, too, was turning red, but for entirely different reasons. Her expression, tight and dark, mirrored Sonny's exactly.

"You're the tech support for Mister Corinthos Sir?" Spinelli couldn't even ask that much without collapsing in a fit of laughter. "But you're a _girl_!"

And just like something out of _Good Fellas_, Elizabeth lost it. "That's it!" she yelled, launching herself at the boy. "A girl? I'll show you a girl, you little-"

"Hey!" Instantly, Jason was on his feet. "Knock it off!"

With great difficulty, he managed to pry Elizabeth's fingers from Spinelli's throat and the tall enforcer insinuated himself between the two warring wards. "That's enough – knock it the hell off."

Elizabeth shoved him away from her and pulled at the cuffs of her white oxford shirt, glaring daggers at the three men. Snorting, she allowed her gaze to come to a rest on her guardian. "Fix this," she growled, pointing a finger menacingly at the mobster. "You started this whole mess – you fix it."

And with that, Elizabeth stalked over to the dining table and grabbed her computer. It took her a few seconds to unplug it and stuff it in her carrying case, and the brunette was soon able to flounce out the door with some part of her dignity still intact, fully set on getting her work done somewhere far, far away from the infuriating interlopers that had descended on her life and within twenty-fours hours were attempting to steal the niche she had carved out for herself.

Damn them to Hell. There was no way she'd let them get away with it.

* * *

Five hours had passed and Elizabeth still hadn't returned. Not that Sonny was worried – he knew she was most likely at her little office at the warehouse or maybe Alexis's apartment, or maybe she was using one of the conference rooms in the back of the No Name.

While his beloved ward passed those five hours in the peace of whatever quiet room she had cloistered herself in, he had spent those five hours dealing with Spinelli. Ever since Elizabeth had stormed out of the penthouse, Spinelli had wanted to know everything about her alleged work for the Corinthos-Morgan organization in the capacity of 'tech support,' as he and Jason called it. And despite the fact that Sonny explained over and over that Elizabeth was a genius coder, a cunning hacker, and a very skilled maker of viruses, Spinelli just didn't seem to believe him.

And that annoyed Sonny beyond belief.

He wasn't buying the kid's goofy, hapless image. There was more to Damien Spinelli than a wholesome, socially awkward little orphan boy from Hicksville, Tuscany. No – Damien Spinelli was smart. And whether Sonny liked it or not, Jason's little sidekick and his own beloved ward were on opposite sides of this battle.

With much difficulty, he managed to get Spinelli out of the door, and not a moment too soon. The boy seemed dead set on believing that not only had Sonny let Elizabeth fool around with his computers because he didn't have the time to find someone that actually knew what he was doing, but that Elizabeth was just playing around and couldn't possibly know anything about the complicated circuitry. After arguing it out with him – and feeling incredibly ridiculous at that – Sonny decided to leave Damien to his own beliefs and not pay him any more mind.

The boy was no sooner out than all talk turned to business. Thankfully, Jason didn't pursue what he had initially suggested, and there was no more talk of ousting Elizabeth and replacing her with Spinelli.

Though he didn't much care for the way Elizabeth talked to Spinelli, Sonny found that he could understand her point if he actually cared to see it her way. She had been the only kid in his life – really, the youngest one in the entire organization – and she knew that she was his right hand. There was very little that Sonny did that Elizabeth didn't know about, and it worked both ways. He trusted her explicitly and implicitly, and she returned the favor. Their partnership provided for him the perfect family life – home and hearth and all that good stuff – that Sonny thought he had lost when he left Brenda standing at the altar. He loved her like he would have his own daughter, he imagined, and he could only hope she felt the same way.

And that was why – if he really forced himself – he understood why she was so snippy with Jason and Spinelli. Elizabeth Webber (she had offered, at the tender age of sixteen, to change it to Corinthos out of respect for him but Sonny had kindly refused, not wanting her to further alienate herself from the filial society that still called her one of its own) had been living in Penthouse II, right across the hall, for a little more than five years. Five long, eventful, happy years.

And then one night, right out of nowhere, one Jason Morgan phoned in from Madrid and said that he'd be coming home and that he'd need his penthouse. Sure, it was technically his fault for putting Elizabeth there in the first place, but it was the best option Sonny had at the time. And they all understood that.

But he could understand her not being pleased with having to pack up five years and cart it all over to his penthouse while awaiting the next relocation to Penthouse V. He could understand her resenting Jason and Spinelli for moving seamlessly into the place that defined the beginning of her new life as part of the Corinthos family and organization: Penthouse II was the place that she recovered, that she learned to use language again, the place that was her safe retreat when the Webbers and Spencers closed in on her, the place where she and Sonny had become a family and come to depend on, trust and love one another.

And now Jason and Spinelli were living there.

It had never before occurred to him just how important Penthouse II was to Elizabeth, but thinking about it this way, Sonny was amazed and just a little disappointed in himself that he had missed it.

And if that wasn't bad enough, his original right hand man was back. Sonny had been noting the interactions between Jason and Elizabeth since the minute the petite brunette had stepped out of the elevator with the iced coffees, and he knew guarded animosity when he saw it. Fortunately, Elizabeth proved him correct by never failing to give Jason a verbal thrashing, which was quite possibly the most amusing part of the whole situation.

Jason, for his part, didn't seem to appreciate the presence of a woman in the Boys' Club, which was what the Corinthos-Morgan had always been. And it was Sonny himself that taught Jason that women should be left out of anything even remotely connected to the business – and here he was, bringing a young woman right into the thick of it!

Elizabeth had been more vocal with her feelings, but her patently female passive-aggression remained intact regardless. She had sparred verbally with both Jason and Spinelli, to be sure, but Sonny was always conscious of the way Elizabeth made sure to stand on his right, her one shoulder just behind his, sending off the unmistakable message that she was his sidekick and partner. And she was.

Yeah, this wasn't good.

He understood why Elizabeth was upset with Jason and Spinelli, who were, for all intents and purposes, taking over her life. And he understood why Jason and Spinelli were irked by his bratty little girl. He really did.

And still, he hoped, irrational though it was, that the three of them would be able to come to some sort of truce.

But there would be time later to work on this group mediation thing that he supposed he would probably have to get used to if the four of them would be living and working in such close proximity. Right now, business was the immediate concern. He had survived all right on his own these past six years without Jason, but things were about to get much, much easier and more efficient with his trusted enforcer back home again.

Sonny slipped his hands into his pockets and paced back and forth in front of the coffee table. Jason, who sat sprawled out on the couch, watched him guardedly.

"The mark is one Salvador Torres," he started. "The situation with him has gotten out of hand and he needs to go or there'll be trouble for us."

Jason ran his index finger over his lower lip. "What kind of trouble?"

Sonny rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. "…He has information on us. Information that he won't hesitate to turn over to the wrong people if we don't give him the Ramsdell territories. And since there's no way in Hell I'm handing over the most valuable one of our routes…"

Jason nodded. "He'll go. I'll take care of it, but I need the information."

His partner nodded. "Sure, sure. We've been keeping a file on him for a few months now, since we figured he might be problematic one day, so talk to Elizabeth and she'll give-"

Sonny stopped and, upon considering his words, quickly shifted track. "On second thought – talk to Stan. He's got all the paperwork and he'll fill you in."

Jason arched a brow at his best friend, more concerned with the mention of the little brunette than the imminent hit. "Elizabeth has the stuff on this guy?"

Sonny shrugged guiltily. "Well, yeah. She's the one who actually obtained all of it – his shipping records, his bank accounts with all the specs, the men on his payroll, his contacts in the governor's office…we wouldn't know any of it without Elizabeth."

"What about Stan?"

"Stan's good with the logistics," Sonny explained. "No one knows more about wiretaps or bombs or cameras or any of that stuff than him. But Elizabeth is the one that knows how to get the information we need. She's been doing it for a long time now."

The confession wasn't sitting well with Jason. "She's really in this, huh?"

Sonny shrugged again. "Best guy – girl – for the job, so…yeah."

"But you were the one that always told me women had no place in the business," Jason burst out, throwing a hand in the air. "And now you're letting Elizabeth dig up everything on our enemies and associates? Is she coming with me on the hit, too?"

The mobster shot him a stern look. "Of course not, Jason – what the hell?"

"You tell me," he shot back, lifting a shoulder in both a careless shrug and a challenge. "You told me that women have no place in our business – there is no excuse for them knowing what we know and doing what we do. That was why…that was why you let Brenda go."

Sonny closed his eyes briefly, as he always did when her name was mentioned, and when he opened them again, his obsidian eyes were guarded but full of conviction. "Yeah, I did say that. But…I'm not sure I believe it anymore."

Neither man spoke for a long moment.

There really wasn't much to say in response to such a thing.

Finally, Sonny sighed and turned away, absently heading over to the mantle where Brenda's picture was, without even knowing it. "I left Brenda at the altar because I knew that if she was going to be my wife, she would be a target. And if she was going to be my wife, there would be things that she would need to know. She'd need to know when I was taking time off to take care of business. She would need to know that there might be times when it's very likely that I won't make it home at all. She would need to know all the men in the organization and she'd need to know all my associates – which ones she can trust and which ones she should never be alone in a room with. She'd have to know all of that, and because I didn't want her to be brought into it…I walked away."

Jason nodded even though Sonny wasn't looking at him.

"I let her go – I told myself that I was setting her free and giving her a second chance of having a good life with someone that could give her all the things I couldn't." He closed his eyes and rested a hand on the mantle. "And a month later, when that car bomb went off with her inside…what was it worth? I would have been able to protect her so much better if I kept her close, if I kept her in this penthouse and didn't walk away just because I was afraid for her."

When Sonny turned around again, Jason finally thought he saw where his best friend was coming from.

"Elizabeth forced me to reconsider all that," he said softly. "I told you she was young when I met her. She saved my life. She came outside to try to return part of the tip I left her, and she saw Sorel's men come up through the alley and – and she screamed.

"She screamed and I fell. I just _fell_. Somehow I managed to bring her down with me. I got us behind that dumpster and then me and Max took Sorel's men down. And it was only when I turned to thank this – this little kid for saving my life that I saw what they'd done to her."

The memory of Elizabeth's thick blood matting her hair and forming a small puddle around the little girl still brought tears to his eyes and Sonny had to take a breath before he could continue.

"That wasn't the first time she was a target because of me. And I figured out – Jason, I figured out that everything I had told you about women and the business and relationships was dead wrong."

Jason winced. No pun intended.

Sonny continued, in no shape to stop now. "There was no way I could leave her alone, so I took care of her. She moved into Harborview, just like Brenda would have if…just like Brenda would have. She became a part of my life and I promised us both that I would take care of her. And that meant keeping her as close to me as possible, and if that meant that she'd know all the dirty things that I didn't want Brenda to know, so be it. She'd sit on the couch sometimes and watch me load my cartridge before leaving with Max, and she'd be sleeping there the next morning by the time I made it home. She knew that there was a chance – all those times – that she'd get a call from a guard or an associate or an enemy that I would be coming home in a casket. She knew what I did, she knew who was dangerous and who might be coming after her – she knew all of it. And it's because she knew all those times that we were able to keep her safe. I remember the first time she got me information – I didn't ask her, but she took it upon herself to hack into Moreno's system and found out that he had just lost a valuable portion of his territory and was planning to grab her and hold her for ransom until I gave in. She showed me that and I doubled her guards without anyone knowing and when Moreno, that son of a bitch, made his move, we were ready for him."

He shook his head again. "It's so much easier to keep them safe when they're with you, when they know what you're up against and what _they're _up against. That's how it is with me and Elizabeth, and…"

Jason shook his head, letting Sonny know he didn't need to continue. He didn't need to say that that was how it could have been with Brenda if he hadn't been so scared.

"Do you get where I'm coming from here?" Sonny asked quietly, in earnest. "It took me forever to see that this was the right way, and sometimes, I even go back on it, but…this is the way that works, Jason."

He nodded slowly. "…So she really knows everything about her associates and enemies?"

Sonny allowed himself a small smile at Jason's sullen tone. "Afraid so. But don't worry – you don't have to deal with her if you ever need that stuff. Just talk to Stan. He'll take care of you."

Jason nodded and stood, giving his friend a stern look. "You do know that this – thing – going on with the kids isn't going to fix itself, right? You're going to have to deal with it."

Sonny let out a beleaguered sigh and sank down onto the couch. "Don't remind me."

* * *

"Oh, come on, honey, it can't be that bad."

"I told you, they're trying to take over my life," Elizabeth groused, thumping her heels on the coffee table. "Alexis, you're supposed to be on _my _side."

"I am on your side, hon – I'm always on your side," the lawyer assured her, making her way over to the couch with a bowl of popcorn. She always made popcorn when Elizabeth came over, even though the brunette never touched the stuff. But Alexis still held out hope that one day, someone would join her in her neuroses. Sometimes, she amazed herself – a neurotic lawyer with OCD hoping to turn the entire world obsessive-compulsive just so she'd have some company.

"I'm especially on your side whenever you're squaring off with Sonny," she added, taking off her heels and folding her legs under her. She had just made it home a little while ago from visiting her nephew to find Elizabeth at the dining table with Mister Perkins. The young woman often let herself into the apartment – but only because Alexis encouraged it – and the lawyer was pleased to have someone to come home to.

"But don't you think you might be blowing this a little out of proportion?" At Elizabeth's dark glare, Alexis shrugged. "I mean, it's probably all just a silly coincidence. You're not the only kid in the world who's good at computers, you know? And Jason did live in Penthouse II before Sonny met you."

The young woman scowled at the latest issue of Alexis's _Law, Culture, and the Humanities_ that was open across her lap. "Stop being logical. You know that pisses me off."

"Oh, honey," Alexis laughed, throwing her arm around Elizabeth's narrow shoulders and giving her an affectionate squeeze. "Chin up. Let's just say that Jason and this Damien Spaghetti really _are _trying to take over your life."

"Done and done."

"Well, who says you're going to make it easy for them?" Alexis inquired, tipping her head to the side like she always did when she was thinking mischievous things.

Elizabeth studied her carefully as her own lips twitched. "What are you saying?"

"Oh, don't play so innocent," Alexis chided, giving her a little shove. "You know you stink at it. All I'm saying is that if they _are _trying to take over your life, you're definitely not going to let them do it without a fight. You're a Corinthos – you fight to the death, and you fight dirty, too."

"I'm sure Sonny would just _love _to hear that you said that."

"If I had a nickel for every time I said it to his face," the lawyer laughed. "In fact, I think the first time I said it to him was during my interview. And he still hired me! But back to your little predicament – I know that whatever happens, you're not just going to let anyone shove you to the side. You've never been like that – never since the day we met, of course."

Elizabeth let out a sigh. "I just don't know what I'm going to do. I mean, I know that Sonny won't blindly make Jason's little lapdog the new tech coordinator, but still. Jason doesn't seem like the type to give up easily. And I have a feeling that if he wants, he can get Sonny to do whatever he says."

"You'll just have to work him over," Alexis suggested. "Men are idiots, honey. And all men have their weaknesses. Find his and exploit it. It's what I do with Sonny, and that's how I can afford a house on Cape Cod. Try it. But you've got to be stealthy about it."

"Stealthy?"

The seasoned lawyer nodded. "Know when to build a bridge and know when to burn a bridge. If you can get farther with Jason by being a sweet little buttercup, do that. If he's the type of guy that needs a fire lit under his butt, go with that. Remember – strategy. It's all about strategy. Can you do it?"

"I can," Elizabeth nodded confidently. "And I think I know exactly which idiot I'm going to try it on first."

* * *

Standing alone in the elevator, Elizabeth wrung her hands and tried to rehearse what she planned to say. All this time, she had been going about everything the wrong way. Spinelli seemed like a meek kid, so she had figured that she could scare him away with the snark. However, given the boy's _career goals_ and his partnership with Jason Morgan, it was now clear that the little nerd wouldn't be going anywhere. And instead of alienating him, she needed to get him on her side so that the two of them could dismantle Jason Morgan's hopes of reinsinuating himself as Sonny's right hand man.

Sorry, buddy, that job was taken.

Elizabeth nodded firmly and waited for the elevator doors to open. As soon as they did, she handed Mister Perkins, carrying case and all, over to Max, the only guard that she trusted with her laptop. He turned toward Penthouse IV to put it away while she headed across the hall to her old penthouse.

According to her camera-tap, Jason wasn't home right now and Spinelli was ruling the roost. It was as good a time as any to corner the little dink and be nice to him.

So long as she didn't get sick first.

But Elizabeth had a firm handle on her nausea and was determined to get this over with. If Spinelli 'decided,' thanks to her help, that he didn't feel like becoming Sonny Corinthos's tech agent, then there would be nothing Jason could do to change his mind and the enforcer would just have to drop it. And that would be _sweet_.

Ah, when would these silly boys understand that they were completely outmatched? They really didn't stand a chance so long as there was a woman in their midst; both she and Alexis ruled over them with iron fists, and what was more, they all knew it.

Gritting her teeth at the thought of knocking on the door of _her _penthouse, Elizabeth did it anyway. But instead of waiting to be let in, she just opened the door and entered, just in time to see Spinelli standing on the balcony and waving his arms like a madman.

"Hey!" she exclaimed, trotting over to where he was hopping about. "What are you doing?"

He didn't seem to understand that his motions were causing her distress and continued to flap his arms around. "I don't know if you noticed, Vivacious One, but there's a whole mess of feathered things that apparently live on this balcony and drop their feathery excrement everywhere. Well, the excrement isn't feathery, but you get my gist. It's all I can do to scare these dumb pigeons away every few hours."

"No, no, don't do that," Elizabeth cried, holding his arms down and looking about for the feathered creatures. "They're not pigeons, nerd."

Spinelli frowned at her. "Then what are they?"

"They're my doves," she answered simply, forcing him to remain still while the birds, apparently having seen her and having decided that it was safe to come back, swooped down onto the balcony again. "They live here. I used to leave food for them every morning; that's what they're looking for."

"You have _doves_?" Spinelli asked, gazing at the birds in new wonder. "Cool."

When she was convinced that he wouldn't scare them away again, Elizabeth let go of his arms and moved over toward the birds. Spinelli watched as they let her tickle their heads with her index finger. "They're not mine, per se. They're wild. But four years ago, they started camping out here and they were so pretty that I just let them stay and started to put food out. They're pretty tame now."

"They don't _look _like doves. I never would have guessed."

"They're called Mourning doves," she explained, "because they're brown and spotted instead of plain white. I've named them all."

This interested Spinelli and he slowly leaned against the balcony, making sure he wouldn't cause the birds to fly away first. "Yeah? What are they called?"

"This one," Elizabeth started, pointing at a bird with pure white tail feathers, "is Derrida. He's the noisiest one of all. He just coos and coos and coos and won't shut up no matter what you do. This one with the black spots on his head is Lacan. He's the newest addition to the group, and he always waits until everyone else eats from the feeder before taking his turn. This guy stretching his wings over here is Baudrillard. He always does that. He loves to arrange and rearrange his feathers – does it _all _the time. He used to be pretty noisy, but I haven't heard him make a peep in months."

She rested two fingers on the ledge and waited for one bird, the one with cinnamon-colored feathers and a white head, to hop on. When it did, she stroked its chest and extended him closer to Spinelli. "And this one is Levinas. He's a punk ass little bitch that doesn't get along with the others."

The boy burst out laughing at that. "Derrida, Lacan, Baudrillard, and Levinas, huh? _Love _the names. Very…fitting, O Vivacious One."

Elizabeth's brows rose. "You know those names?"

Spinelli shrugged with an air of false modesty. "Deconstruction and the violence of naming; lack and the male gaze; hyperreality and the precession of the simulacra and obscurity of the referent; accepting the Other and doing violence to the Other as ultimately the same thing – you tell me."

"Get out of here, nerd – you know your theorists."

Again, he shrugged. "English was kind of my thing back home. I told you – Hicksville, Tuscany, just a stone's throw from Rome. I had nothing to do so I decided to learn English. And then I would go to Rome and get all the books I could get my hands on. Theory is my favorite, along with modernism. The only bad thing about it is that now Stone Cold is kind of riding me to get enrolled in PCU. I don't know about you, Vivacious One, but I like being a bum. I've turned it into an art form."

She had to smile at that. "Well, PCU's got a great English department. Sonny might have told you that I majored in English there."

"What were your specialties?"

"Critical Theory and contemporary fiction."

"Hence the names for the Peaceful Ones."

"Yup," she nodded proudly. "They fit, too. So, yeah," Elizabeth added, a little flustered now to learn that she and the nerd shared some of the same interests. She set Levinas back on the ledge and watched him idly peck at Lacan when the other bird got too close.

"Anyway, the reason I stopped over-"

"You missed seeing the Jackal's exemplary visage?" Spinelli guessed.

Elizabeth spared him a stern look. "Don't push it, nerd."

"Sorry."

"The reason I came over…" Oh, God. This was going to make her nauseous for a week to come. "I wanted to apologize."

Spinelli's eyes widened. "I'm listening."

"I wanted to…apologize for the way I've been treating you," Elizabeth got out. "I've been snippy and snarky and it was…undeserved?"

Spinelli nodded, letting her know that she was headed in the right direction.

"So I wanted to come over and apologize. I've just been in a bad mood this past week and when you and Jason arrived, I took my frustrations out on you guys and for that I'm…erk…sorry."

To her surprise, Spinelli took the liberty of putting his hand on her shoulder and looking at her earnestly. "Sounds like you got your cycle real bad, huh?"

Oh, come _on. _Surely, that was grounds enough to kill the little twerp and let her four feathered theorists peck him until he decomposed. But Elizabeth gritted her teeth and nodded. "Yeah."

The boy possessed a giving nature and nodded, pleased with the admission. "Don't worry about it, Vivacious One. I figured it was something like that. Girls are normally so…sweet and kind. I knew it was a fluke."

As the legal ward of Sonny Corinthos, she had been awarded five homicides on the down-low. Currently, she was down to her third, so she could very easily use up another one on this chump…

Elizabeth just nodded and pressed on with her carefully rehearsed speech. "It's just that…I guess, could you try to understand it from my point?"

Spinelli yanked his hand back when Levinas made to peck at it. "The Jackal is always open to new ways of thinking."

"It's just that I've been living right here, in this penthouse, ever since I came home from the hospital," she explained. "My whole life as far back as I can remember it took place right _here_. And for my whole life as far back as I can remember it, I've been good with computers – so good that Sonny let me into the organization. It was how I made my first friend – Stan Johnson. My whole life as far back as I can remember it is tied up in this stuff, in being Sonny's right hand computer gal."

Spinelli looked like he didn't fully believe her. "If you don't mind my asking, Vivacious One, what can you do with circuitry of the Mister-Perkins-Princess-Peach variety?"

Elizabeth arched a brow and began ticking things off on her fingers. "I can get into any secure system with my eyes closed; I once hacked into CIA files; I can make anything stored online disappear with a single click; I can create complex code that loops while I infiltrate the governing system; and I'm a viral engineer."

"A what-what with the what-what?"

"I make viruses," she explained dryly. "Wreak major havoc, that sort of thing."

He still didn't look fully convinced, but she could tell the boy was getting there. "Do you have an online moniker? Mine's theJackal."

"SatansPixieBitch," Elizabeth replied, shaking his extended hand. When in Rome… "Maybe we can chat online sometime."

Spinelli's eyes bulged. "Omigosh, _you're_ SatansPixieBitch? Princess Peach caught one of your viruses once!"

Elizabeth's widened, partly from surprise and partly from delight. If one of her viruses had infiltrated his computer, there might be a way for her to infiltrate his hard drive remotely. But she'd need a gateway, and if the kid was dumb enough…

Awesome.

She reached for her wallet and after searching for a minute, pulled out a folded up piece of paper. "Here – let me give you my 50 digit encryption key so that we actually _can _talk sometime."

Spinelli took it and inspected the lettering. "Cool. Hey – I wasn't here when it happened, but were you responsible for that 5-second digital outage in Atlantic City? That was _nice_."

Elizabeth nodded proudly. "That was some of my handiwork, yes. Sonny needed to, uh, recover something from an associate of his, so I created a digital pinch that knocked out anything remotely binary for five full seconds. During that time, he got what he needed and we were long gone by the time everyone had finally sorted everything out."

Spinelli was rubbing his hands together in glee. "That was _awesome_. Stone Cold said that the Moreno guy lost more than half of his net worth that day. Way to be marginally awesome, O Vivacious One."

She supposed that was a compliment, so Elizabeth smiled graciously. "Well, it's what I do. Really – it's what I _do_. It's about the only thing I've ever done, ever since the accident. That's why it's so important to me to stay on as Sonny's tech support gal, you know?"

Spinell was nodding slowly. "Because that was part of the reason you guys became such good friends and such, right? That was why you became partners in the first place."

She nodded eagerly, glad that the boy was grasping it fairly quickly. "Exactly. So do you think…if you wouldn't mind…could we maybe keep things the way they are?"

Oh, God, here came the hard part. Carefully, gingerly, Elizabeth reached out and clasped the boy's hand in her own while turning her best puppy eyes on him. Now a bit of a breathy murmur…

"It would _really _mean a lot to me, Spinelli."

The boy swallowed and nodded. "The Jackal understands completely, Vivacious One. Gather your rosebuds while you may."  
_  
Steady now, girl. _Elizabeth grinned and leaned over to press a kiss to his cheek. "Oh, thank you, Spinelli! You just made my day!"

He beamed back at her and leaned on the banister, almost crushing Derrida who began to squawk terribly. "Not a problem for my fellow hack-tastic techie."

She patted his shoulder and took a step back, eager to get away from this entire distasteful situation. "Well, I have to go, but thank you so much! I'll see you around, neighbor."

"Count on it, Vivacious One," Spinelli smiled as Elizabeth all but fled from Penthouse II.

* * *

_Perhaps that night, perhaps the next night…_

It was late by the time Elizabeth and Stan Johnson got back to Harborview after dinner at the No Name, and the brunette invited her best friend in for dessert and just to hang out as they usually did on these warm summer nights. Initially, Sonny would try to keep them company but their discussion always turned to things technological in nature and the older man found himself ill-equipped to be too eloquent in those areas so he would politely excuse himself.

Elizabeth handed her Styrofoam container of leftovers to Stan as she fished around for her keys since Max was nowhere to be found. "I'm telling you, I totally handled it. It's as good as done. And I even gave him this encryption code that will not only break down the barricade my Nightingale virus put up so that we can chat, but it'll also let me access his hard drive from _anywhere_. Nerd doesn't stand a chance."

Stan laughed. "What can I say, Webber? You're a credit to our profession. So, you think Sonny has any of those tarts left over from breakfast? Those were _incredible _and I'm _starving _right now."

"We just ate!" she laughed, kicking the door open when it stuck. "Honestly, Nikolas is the same way. I'll just never understand you guys – oh."

Elizabeth and Stan paused in the doorway when they saw Sonny, Jason and Spinelli seated together in the living room in serious conversation.

Elizabeth closed the door slowly behind her and Stan. "…What's going on? Did I miss a meeting or something?"

Sonny shook his head. "No, no, we were just…talking."

Jason and Spinelli looked at each other smugly and then at Elizabeth, who could already sense that she was being backed into a corner.

"Oh, no," she muttered under her breath, turning to Sonny. "What's going on? What did they tell you?"

"Nothing," Sonny replied. "It's just…I figured out how we're going to deal with this tech support situation – it's the only fair way to do it."

Elizabeth's jaw dropped. _"What _situation? Sonny, that position is mine – I've held it for the past five years and-"

"Well, to be honest, it was never an official position," Sonny hedged. "Whenever I needed something, I'd go to either you or Stan. It was nothing official in its capacity, like Spinelli pointed out."

The nerd didn't meet her gaze and instead smirked at his shoes.

"Oh, he did, did he?" Elizabeth snarled, folding her arms across her chest. "How 'bout that."

Sonny didn't understand the subtext. "Yeah, he did. So here's what I've decided: consider the rest of this summer an examination period. I will be giving both of you individual tasks to complete, and I will monitor who seems to be performing best. Sometimes I'll give you the same project and I'll note who finishes first and does it best. And of course, you can both take it upon yourselves to occasionally impress me. When I've made my decision, I will announce it and that person will be the official tech support coordinator and the other will be…part-time."

It was the most ridiculous thing Elizabeth had ever heard. "You can't be-"

"Sweetheart, it's the only fair thing to do," Sonny answered apologetically. "I know you've been working for me for years now, but it's not fair to ignore Spinelli…"

Elizabeth exploded as both Jason and the turd in question puffed out their chests. "Sure it is! It's more than fair! It's-"

"Come on, Vivacious One," Spinelli drawled, standing up from his seat and giving her a goofy smile. "Be a good sport. It would be most becoming."

Oh, that was _it_. Nerd was going to big fat _die_.

In two seconds flat, Elizabeth's hands were fisted in Spinelli's olive green shirt. "You little double-crossing _dink_! I should have pummeled you when I had the chance, you no-good snake in the grass! Tell you what, nerd-"

But Jason didn't let her finish her threats. As always, the enforcer leapt into super protective mode whenever his darling little protégé was under attack and he was now trying to haul them apart. Sonny rubbed his hands over his face and Stan watched the scene from by the door with interest.

"Let go of him," he growled, finally succeeding. Still glaring at Elizabeth, Jason shoved Spinelli behind him. "You're not going to like what happens if you keep hurting him."

Elizabeth snorted. "Ooh, big man. Does it make you feel tough to threaten girls, Jason? You must really get off on it, huh? Jackass. And what about you, you little twip?"

Spinelli shrugged and offered her a genuine smile. "I'm sorry you feel betrayed, Vivacious One, but I didn't get to where I am by being nice and stupid."

"Son of a…"

"Elizabeth…"

But she was in no mood for Sonny's gentle disapproval and sent him such a dark glare that her guardian turned to his associate and waved him away. "I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good night."

Jason strode over to the door, taking care to keep Spinelli behind him, and slammed it shut behind him.

"I think I'll be going, too," Stan spoke up, setting the container he held onto the desk. "Your salmon's over here, Liz. I'll…see you guys." And with that, he, too, was gone.

Sonny rubbed his jaw as Elizabeth's temper threatened to simmer over. "Sonny…"

"This is what is going to happen," he interrupted, holding his hands up and making his way over to her. Sonny placed his hands on her shoulder and looked her directly in the eyes. He'd hated having to oust Elizabeth like that but Jason and Spinelli had been relentless. And since he'd already made it mildly clear that the boy annoyed him beyond belief, Jason was just looking for any excuse to charge him with being unfair to the newcomer. So Sonny had begrudgingly agreed, even though he didn't like it one bit.

Elizabeth lifted her chin a notch. _"What's _going to happen?"

He didn't move his hands from her shoulders. "You are going to complete every single assignment I give you perfectly. You're going to go above and beyond like you always do. And you are going to make that little punk sorry he ever set his fingers on a keyboard."


	4. Chapter 4

**Hack 04**

Damien Emmanuel Spinelli wasn't a bad kid. At least, he didn't think he was. Jason said the jury was still out, but that was classic Stone Cold: always afraid to get in touch with his feelings and let his friends know how much he loved them.

…At least, that was Spinelli's story and he was sticking to it.

But on the whole, Damien Spinelli was not a bad kid. He was never malicious. He didn't cuss, he didn't steal (except, of course, for the times that he helped Jason steal), he didn't sleep around, and he didn't drink (the last two he abstained from more due to necessity and the way shit worked out than his own choosing, but that was neither here nor there). He didn't think he was a bad person.

Then why the hell did he feel so crummy?

He knew why. As he slipped on his shoes and headed into the kitchen to see if the Beneficent Stone Cold had left him any breakfast, he knew. It was because of the Vivacious One. He had made her think that he wouldn't try to take over her unofficial job and then he dragged Stone Cold over there and made Mister Corinthos Sir consent to at least give him a shot.

Of course, the fact that Elizabeth was a total Dragon to him helped Spinelli not feel so bad at the time. Not only had she expressed no regret about infecting poor Princess Peach with her virus, but she had the nerve to think that he would fall for her dumb encryption-key ruse to let her hack his internal hard drive from a remote location.

Puh-lease. The Jackal wasn't born yesterday.

But the look on her face from the night before was now coming back to haunt him. He hadn't meant to double-cross her that way, but he had seen it as his last option.

The Dragon would understand. She'd be pissy and she'd call him 'nerd' and she'd bitch out Stone Cold, but eventually the whole thing would blow over and she'd accept his new position in the Stone-Cold-Mister-Corinthos-Sir organization and she'd move on. The Vivacious One would understand…and hopefully he'd still be alive by the time she did.

But the fact remained that he simply needed this more than Elizabeth ever would, and for that reason alone he was willing to fight her tooth and nail. Just call him Sir George or Red Crosse (actually, spoiler alert, they were the same guy), because he was out to slay the Dragon.

Their situations were so immensely and intensely different. She was the legal ward of Michael Corinthos Junior, one of the most powerful mobsters on the East Coast. But beyond that, Mister Corinthos Sir loved her. Spinelli had seen the way the two of them were around each other. They fought and bickered and teased, but at the end of the day it was painfully clear that the Dragon was fiercely loyal to her guardian and that Mister Corinthos Sir would gladly lay down his own life to keep her safe and happy.

Never in his life had Spinelli been fortunate enough to have someone care about him the way Mister Corinthos Sir cared about Elizabeth.

And that was why, even if Elizabeth didn't get to keep her unofficial job as the Official Hacker for the organization, it was all right. She had her cushy job with that online magazine of hers, and she had her penthouse in Harborview Towers. Mister Corinthos Sir would never think to throw her out if she wasn't doing anything of value with herself.

Spinelli, on the other hand, didn't have that safety net.

Sure, he and Stone Cold had hit it off really well in Rome. Saving a man's life was a great way to get on his good side, after all. And sure, Jason protected him and looked out for him and listened to him and made sure he was fed and clothed and sheltered and relatively safe – as safe as one could be in Stone Cold's chosen career path.

But coming back to Stone Cold's home digs had changed everything. They weren't on the run anymore. They weren't dropping in on an associate, staying in town for a few weeks or months and then packing up and taking off, lickety-split, to lather, rinse and repeat.

This was Jason's home, and he had roots here. Spinelli didn't. Jason's family was here, all his friends were here – sure, that was, like, one person, but still one more than Spinelli had – and his house was here. And he was being nice enough to let him stay in his penthouse, but for how long?

Already he was talking about Spinelli enrolling in PCU and joining the English program since it was what he was interested in. But that was all that he had said – and he had left all the questions unanswered. Would Spinelli be dorming at PCU? Who would be paying for tuition? Would he be expected to pick up odd jobs all around while in school – the kid that had never worked a day in his life and just wasn't that good around…you know, people? And what after college? Would he be expected to go to grad school? Make something of himself? Get a job?

There was absolutely no security in his current situation, and Spinelli knew it. Stone Cold had been great, the best mentor he could have ever hoped for (even though Jason resisted that title with unparalleled passion), but Spinelli couldn't hope to live off his kindness forever. Hell, Jason could kick him out in a week's time and tell him to go make his own way in life. And what would he do then? A strange kid in a strange land, so far away from the only home – a crappy one at that – that he had ever known, without a single other person to give a damn about him.

Yeah, that had 'winner' written all over it.

No, the best option was to get a job in the organization and prove once and for all to both Stone Cold and Mister Corinthos Sir that he was brilliant, that his skill was unsurpassed, and that they wouldn't know what to do without him. If he could accomplish that, he'd be safe. He wouldn't be tossed out into the street, he wouldn't be abandoned by Jason like he had been abandoned by every single other person in his life…he would be safe.

Because if Jason, in the end, turned out to be just like his dad and walked away and let him loose in a world that gave him no answers, well…Spinelli knew he wouldn't be able to take it. After everything that he had survived, every crippling loss that he suffered through with his dignity intact, it would be the straw that broke his back.

Spinelli shook off the unpleasant thought. If he wanted to do well in his new home, he couldn't dwell on every bad thing in his past. That was, by definition, behind him now. He needed to look to the future and with a foe as formidable as the Dragon, he needed to lay out his strategy. And if he was going to do that, he would have to eat to boost his energy levels.

The matter settled, Spinelli opened the refrigerator to find a bunch of bananas rocking on the top ledge. He pulled them out and peeling one out of the bunch, was mildly surprised to see that there was writing on it.

_Jason Morgan's Banana._

Okay, so Stone Cold was very possessive of his bananas. No problem. Spinelli put the claimed banana down and ripped off another one.

_Jason Morgan's Banana._

Well, that was weird. Third time would be the charm.

_Jason Morgan's Banana._

Okay, this was getting a little out of hand.

_Jason Morgan's Banana.  
Jason Morgan's Banana.  
Go Red Sox. Jason Morgan's Banana.  
Jason Morgan's Banana._

Wow.

* * *

"Stan says our guy left for Buenos Aires for two weeks, so as soon as he gets back…" Jason trailed off and nodded, letting his partner know that he planned to follow through on the hit.

Sonny nodded back and spread a hunk of butter on a thick slice of cinnamon raisin toast. He offered it to Jason, who shook his head, and then set it down on a plate and began buttering another piece. "That's fine. I was hoping that you could help me with something else today."

"Sure."

"We've got a new crop of applicants and I was hoping you could help with the interview process," Sonny said slowly, knowing that Jason hated having to talk to prospective employees. "You wouldn't have to talk or anything, but I wouldn't mind having you there. You're a good judge of character, and you have a way of telling if someone's on the level or not."

He nodded. "I can do that."

"Good judge of character," he heard Elizabeth mutter under her breath as she came down the steps. The words were followed by a little snort, and Jason rolled his eyes.

To her credit, Elizabeth spared him only one dark glare before ignoring him completely. She headed over to Sonny's desk where she had left her purse from the night before and began transferring the items to the fancy black handbag she held.

Her side was to him, giving Jason the opportunity to look her over. Her appearance the first night had thrown him, but it had soon become clear that Elizabeth Webber was a very prissy dresser. That first night was the only time that he'd seen her in denim, a simple tee shirt and flip flops; all the other times they crossed paths, she had been dressed like someone out of one of those ridiculous fashion magazines. Far too preppy and clean-cut for someone her age.

She wore slim-fitting pants, collared shirts, respectable half-sleeved embroidered sweaters, little vests, and pencil-heeled shoes that clicked ominously when she walked. He had never seen her wear a low-cut top or display a serious amount of leg.

Even now, on a bright, sunny morning like today, she wore tailored black pinstripe trousers over a pair of black and white tweed boots, an almost-see through white collared shirt that she left untucked, and a little gray vest over that to keep her look from becoming too PG. Her hair was pulled back into a stylish little twist and only a few tendrils sprang free; her jewelry consisted of only her watch, a beaded bracelet and a long, sparsely beaded necklace that hung halfway down to her waist; and her makeup was very simple, barely there.

She looked so put-together – like a woman in a photograph, every hair perfectly in place, nothing out of sorts – that Jason wanted to walk over there and personally muss her up.

Just a little.

Yeah, she looked like she could use a good _mussing_.

But those thoughts soon turned very, very disturbing in nature, and Jason had to remind himself that her appearance perfectly reflected her snippy, prissy nature, and after that, he was good.

"Where are you off to?" he couldn't help but ask. "Secretary convention?"

Elizabeth nonchalantly pulled out her compact mirror and held it in such a way that she could flip him off right in his face without Sonny noticing. In truth, it even took Jason a few seconds to realize that he was being insulted.

"Elizabeth was invited by the head of the English department at PCU to guest-lecture in one of the summer courses," Sonny spoke up, pouring a small glass of milk. "Isn't that right, sweetheart?"

"Yup," she answered smoothly, giving him a sweet smile. "Dr. Jackson was so sad to see me graduating that she offered me a spot in her Critical Methods course. I better get going – class starts in twenty minutes."

"Not before you have something to eat," Sonny insisted, beckoning her toward the table. "You don't eat enough as it is. Come on – I got that preservative-free butter you use, and your cinnamon raisin bread. But honestly, that much sugar in the morning…it's not healthy."

Elizabeth had to smile at the great lengths that Sonny had gone to, so she set her purse down and moved over to the table. "You got something to keep you busy today, Sonny?"

He nodded, passing her the toast that he had buttered. "I'm interviewing workers for the warehouse and security details."

"I'll do the background checks for you," she offered as Jason looked on from the couch. "Just let me know when you need them by."

Sonny tugged on his ear. "Speaking of those…"

Elizabeth arched a brow.

"I'm going to divide them up in two and give a stack to you and Spinelli each," he explained. "Whoever gets them back first – and does a thorough job – wins the round."

The brunette shrugged coolly. "Not worried. Nerd has no idea how many of these I've done over the years."

"Hey," Jason warned, glaring at the girl. Elizabeth rolled her eyes, having temporarily forgotten her rule to ignore him, and would have responded had the nerd in question not burst into Penthouse IV just then with two pieces of fruit in his hand.

He marched over to Jason and brandished the fruit. "Why do you believe in the demarcation of bananas?" Spinelli demanded. "Is it because you hate me? Is it because I accidentally made that Swiss supermodel in Belgium think that I was your 'partner'? Because I already apologized for that – like, a thousand times!"

Jason was on his feet as soon as Spinelli mentioned the Swiss supermodel he'd managed to charm halfway to his bed before she got the wrong idea and asked him if he thought turquoise would be the new pink that fall, whatever the hell that meant, but it was too late. Spinelli had already said the word 'partner.'

Elizabeth's jaw dropped, revealing a small chunk of chewed up toast sitting on her tongue, and then she burst out laughing. She laughed so hard that she choked on some of the toast and spewed a little onto the carpet, and she had to grip the chair she was standing next to as Sonny picked up the regurgitated food from his carpet with a napkin.

_"Partner_?" she exclaimed, looking excitedly at Sonny, who was biting down on a smirk. "Omigosh, did you _hear _that? Thanks, nerd," she beamed at Spinelli, "you totally made my day!"

"Don't care, Dragon," he informed her, sticking the bananas in Jason's face. "I'm hungry. So e'splain."

Jason stared at him as if he'd lost his mind – which was never out of the realm of possibility with Spinelli. "I don't write on bananas."

Oh, if he had a nickel for all the times in Spinelli's company that he'd said something he never in a million years thought he'd say…well, he wouldn't have to kill people for a living, that was for sure.

"Well, if you didn't-"

Elizabeth crammed the last of her toast in her mouth and kissed Sonny on the cheek, wiping away a smear of butter afterward. She grabbed her purse and headed toward the door. "Okay, I'm going. Max! You wanna come with me today and get your learn on?"

"Way ahead of you, Toothpick," the guard answered, jingling his keys. "Let's go."

"It was _you_," Spinelli accused, wagging a banana in Elizabeth's direction as if it were a reprimanding digit. "You did this. Why, Dragon, why?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "It's not something you can explain. But if you've never written on a banana with a ballpoint pen, you haven't really lived. S'long, nerd."

Jason was having a hard time digesting this. "You broke into my penthouse and wrote on my bananas?"

Honestly, Spinelli and the little brat would be perfect for one another. Besides, it'd keep the crazy contained.

Elizabeth's lips formed a scandalized "o" and she batted her lashes. "Ooh, the phallic implications!" Jason glared and Spinelli giggled. "Okay, fine, maybe I did write on your bananas. In what world is that illegal? I gotta go."

But Jason's next words – payback, as he liked to think of them – stopped her in her tracks.

"You're not going anywhere without Spinelli."

She turned around very slowly and pinned him with the death glare. "What, now?"

Jason smirked wickedly, enjoying her lack of humor perhaps just a little too much. "You're going to take Spinelli and show him to the admissions office. He's got a meeting with the Dean of Admissions in half an hour."

Spinelli's jaw dropped. "What? Stone Cold, how-"

But Jason just shook his head. "No arguing. Here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna go with Elizabeth and you're gonna get your ass over to that meeting and you will be accepted for summer courses and enrolled as a full-time student this fall. Got it?"

The boy gulped and looked down at his clothes. "But if you'll pardon the Jackal, Stone Cold, he is wearing most casual threads and-"

"The clothes you have on are fine," Jason interrupted. "Now _go_. Anthony's waiting for you. And try not to be…weird."

"But, Stone Cold-"

_"Go_, Spinelli."

"But-"

_"Now_."

Elizabeth cast a pleading look at Sonny. "Do I _have _to take him with me?"

Sonny was just about to offer up another bodyguard to take Spinelli when Jason caught his eye and glared darkly. Caught between a rock and a hard place, and mostly not wanting to be accused of favoring his ward which was so clearly what he was doing, Sonny shrugged apologetically.

Elizabeth huffed and yanked her purse off the desk, using her other arm to snag Spinelli in the crook of his elbow and haul him to the door. "Fine. Come on, nerd."

Jason smirked as she slammed the door shut and leaned back on the couch, pleased. Thank God they were gone – now they could drive each other crazy for a change.

* * *

An hour and a half later, Elizabeth breezed into Sonny's air-conditioned penthouse looking every bit as put together as she did upon leaving the house. Jason, who had stopped by to see if Sonny wanted to grab some lunch and head over to the warehouse, was mildly displeased to see her looking as cool as a cucumber despite the fact that it was ninety-four degrees outside with the humidity levels off the chart.

Elizabeth barely spared him a glance as she entered. If she had been surprised to see him sprawled out on the couch in Sonny's penthouse as if he owned the joint, she didn't show it. Instead, she dropped her purse on Sonny's desk chair – subtly letting Jason know that it was she who owned the joint – and bent to undo the clasp of her shoes, not realizing that it gave Jason an excellent opportunity to zoom in on her backside.

"Where's Sonny?" she asked, only when she had to. She had declined lunch on campus with Dr. Jackson in hopes that she could convince Sonny to get out of the office and grab a bite with her.

Jason gestured toward the hall. "He's making a phone call in the office. You're back early – where's Spinelli?"

The brunette shrugged nonchalantly and headed over to the dining table, barefoot, to check if she had any email messages. "I don't know."

Jason sat up straight as she floated by. "What do you mean, you don't know?"

"Don't know what?" Sonny asked, emerging from his office.

"I don't know," Elizabeth answered simply, carefully reapplying a loose sticker on Mister Perkins's lid.

Jason's lips settled into a grim line. "You mean you _left _him there?"

Her lips twitched, the little minx. "I might have. I don't know."

The enforcer growled and got up from the couch. "Oh, for fuck's sake – Max!"

"Yes, Boss?"

Jason turned around to glare at the unapologetic brunette. "Get the car and go back to PCU and _find Spinelli_. She left him on campus and-"

"ALL RIGHT WHERE IS SHE?"

Elizabeth and Sonny looked over just in time to see a very sweaty Spinelli pull himself up to the door and lean against the threshold. His hair was matted and wet and clung to his florid skin, and the boy had his sights set on his rival.

"Hello, Spinelli," Elizabeth beamed. "Great day for a three-mile walk, huh? I would have joined you, but I was wearing heels. Maybe next time, though."

Ha. Served the little nerd right for double-crossing her. No one messed with Default Corinthos (that was what some of the guards called her) and got away with it.

The boy glowered at her. "You _left _me on campus. Not cool, Dragon – NOT COOL!"

Elizabeth tilted her head, the picture of innocence. "I'm sure it wasn't intentional, Spinelli. I just had no idea where you were. You have a habit of disappearing, you know? I think you're somewhere, and you're not. I think you're on one side, and you're not. You can't blame me for getting confused. And even," she muttered under her breath.

He had no means of attack but a dark glare, and that was precisely what Spinelli employed as he tried to think of a comeback. Sonny, who had no idea what subtext was being used, shrugged and tried to mediate.

"Well, to be fair, Elizabeth's schedule was different than Spinelli's," he pointed out. "She had her seventy-minute class and he just had a meeting. She really didn't know what time he'd be out of there."

Jason and Spinelli both turned their dark glares to him while Elizabeth beamed.

"Thanks, Sonny," she replied exuberantly, hopping up from her seat and closing Mister Perkins down. "Hey, I've got an idea – it's such a nice day out, let's go out for lunch. We can get ice cream afterwards. What do you think?"

Sonny shrugged, but Elizabeth already had her purse in hand and was reaching for his arm. "Sure, why not? Jason, what did you say you wanted to talk about?"

Nothing that mattered now.

Jason shook his head begrudgingly. "Nothing important."

Elizabeth smirked and opened the penthouse door, neatly brushing Spinelli aside. "We'll see you guys later."

"Oh, and be here at eight o'clock tonight," Sonny ordered, looking at both young hackers. "I've got a list of background checks for you both to do, and I'm distributing it tonight after dinner. See you guys."

The two men stood in silence as Sonny and Elizabeth disappeared into the hall, pulling the door shut behind them. Spinelli, who had found a three-mile hike a little too much for a body that mostly just sat in front of the computer all day, sagged against the desk. But Jason wasn't about to let this go.

He turned swiftly on his sidekick, one finger raised warningly. "All right, this is what's going to happen. _Whatever _that brat does from now on, you're going to do it ten times better."


	5. Chapter 5

**Hack 05**

Ten o'clock the next morning, Spinelli was still camped out on Jason's sofa, performing background checks. After he and Jason agreed that the kid gloves had to come off, the boy had made up his mind to ridiculously outperform the Dragon on _everything_. No opportunity was too big or too small to show Mister Corinthos Sir that you didn't send a girl in to do a man's worth.

And that man had been drinking coffee and orange soda all night (chasing it with sips of water to hold off the jitteriness that came with the caffeine) and clicking away diligently. Of course, he had to get up every half hour to use the bathroom but other than that, he was a regular hacking machine.

Jason came down the steps, pulling his t-shirt down to his waist. He glanced at Spinelli, surrounded by a dozen bottles of orange soda and, taking pity on the kid, cleaned up some of the mess and called in for breakfast. Spinelli grunted something incoherent in reply and only looked up when Jason said something about leaving.

"What? You're going? You're not going to stay here and cheer the Jackal on?"

Jason arched a brow. "No."

Spinelli deflated. "Fine. But what's more important than my imminent triumph over the harbinger of feminine trickery?"

"My old friend."

That was news to Spinelli. "Dude, Stone Cold – you have _friends_? Really? Wow!"

His roommate rolled his eyes. "Just work on your list. And…good luck."

Spinelli's eyes lit up. "Thank you, Stone Cold. Your words of encouragement mean a lot to the Jackal, and rest assured that he will do his whole-hearted best to outwit the fearsome Dragon and restore peace to the land so that the people, they may rejoice."

"Yeah, whatever," Jason mumbled, grabbing his jacket and pulling the door shut behind him. "Just make sure you finish before she does."

* * *

For the past week, Nikolas Cassidine had just been _buried_. If he wasn't expected to show up at random meetings, he had Cassidine portfolios and holdings to inspect and review, and here was a business associate from the end of the earth calling to set something up and that was just an invitation to an all-day sales call, and then his uncle would show up and expect a progress report and…damn, sometimes it just sucked to be Prince.

But now, he finally had a morning somewhat to himself and he was looking forward to a very special visitor who had recently arrived in Port Charles after an extended stay abroad. Nikolas shuffled his papers around his desk, trying to tidy up and eventually just giving up, and looked up with a smile when Alfred escorted his guest in.

"Your Highness, a Mister Jason Morgan here to see you."

The young Prince was already coming around his antique desk to shake Jason's hand. The enforcer returned the greeting and clapped Nikolas on the back, and the prince nodded for Alfred to excuse himself.

"It's good to see you," Nikolas grinned, grasping his old friend by the shoulder and ushering him over to the couch. "You look good – still in one piece, and that's something to be thankful for. I'm only sorry it took me this long to be able to see you."

Jason waved off his apology and sat down on the overstuffed couch. Nikolas was one of his oldest friends, along with Sonny – his only friend along with Sonny, actually – and there was no need for such apologies. "Don't worry about it – things have been busy on my end, too."

Nikolas smiled at the familiar answer and offered him a glass of cognac, which Jason accepted. And there they were, in the main room of the Cassidine home on Spoon Island, the two prodigal sons. It was no wonder, then, that they were such good friends.

As chance would have it, Nikolas had come to town around the same time that Jason had suffered his accident, with the sole aim of blowing his mother's life apart. And he had succeeded.

He had exposed the town's beloved Laura Spencer's darkest secret – that she had an older son that she abandoned to a family of psychopaths that tried to freeze the world just so she could raise a family with her rapist. Adding insult to injury, Nikolas stepped forward to donate bone marrow to his half-sister Lulu, saving her life, and then refused to have anything to do with the family. Luke and Laura's marriage had never recovered and their precious 'firstborn' Lucky had run away from home and taken up residence elsewhere until his parents convinced him to come home.

And then Nikolas had gone and struck a business deal with Sonny Corinthos, forged a friendship with the new enforcer Jason Morgan, and eventually enlisted his Aunt Alexis's help in getting Elizabeth Webber named as the official Corinthos ward. Naturally, the Spencers, who considered the girl part of the extended family, weren't very pleased. And naturally, that fact pleased Nikolas, then just a seventeen-year old boy, greatly.

"So how is everything? You settling in okay? Still got that wander-lust?" Nikolas teased, tapping his nails on his glass of cognac.

Jason just smiled. "It's going okay. Sonny kept my job for me-"

"-Of course, of course."

"And things are a little slow right now."

"Well, that's good – it'll give you plenty of time to get acclimated to your surroundings again."

He nodded. "Yeah, a lot of things have changed." Boy, had a lot of things changed.

Nikolas's eyes glittered. "I take it you've met Elizabeth already, hm?"

Jason nodded. "Yeah."

"And? What do you think of the Default Corinthos? I think that's what your men call her. Some of them – the braver ones."

The enforcer shook his head. "She's…something."

Nikolas let out a laugh, "Truer words. That's really the only way to describe someone so…spirited."

Jason nodded with a matching grin. "Yeah, she took me by surprise, I'll admit that. I wasn't expecting someone like that. Plus, I brought a friend over from overseas and the two of them aren't getting along."

The Prince nodded knowingly. "Yes, you mentioned him – Damien Spinelli, correct? Italian?"

"Yeah," Jason answered. "Good kid – we fell in together in Rome. He didn't have anyone looking out for him so I brought him under my protection, kept him around, you know."

"Of course," Nikolas agreed. "Elizabeth said that your Spinelli's taking her on for the position of Sonny's official hacker."

A man well accustomed to hiding his surprise even in moments of sheer terror, Jason still gave himself away with a little twitch of his brow. "You and Elizabeth…talk?"

"Sure," he responded heartily, leaning back in his armchair and swirling the cognac as he'd been taught to. "You might know by now that I was the one that put my aunt Alexis in touch with Sonny when he was petitioning for guardianship. After that, she became his official lawyer, and Elizabeth and I got to know each other. You know how the people in this town can be – Sonny wanted her to have some friends that he knew he could trust. I've known her for years, and we're fairly close."

Jason wasn't sure how to feel about that, especially given Nikolas's occasional but well-publicized womanizing ways. There weren't many women who could say no to the Heir Apparent of the Cassidine throne, especially when he turned on the royal charm.

"Yeah?"

Nikolas nodded languidly. "Mm-hmm. Anything you want to know about her, I'll act as your buffer."

Jason leaned back and propped one foot up on the Victorian coffee table. "Okay, I'll take you up on that. What's her problem?"

"Oh, you'll have to be more specific than that," Nikolas teased before relenting. "Alright, alright, I can only assume that you're referring to Elizabeth's tendency to be…domineering. Possessive, even. Correct?"

Jason nodded.

"Well, you'll have to remember that she's the only woman in your organization," Nikolas started. "And not only that, but she's Sonny's ward. Ever since she woke up from the accident, she's been treated different, especially by Sonny and the guards higher up in the organization. Special."

Again he nodded. Yeah, he'd seen enough of that.

"She was just a child when she came to live with Sonny," the prince continued. "She had to learn how to live with them and they had to learn how to live with her. And they did that by generally spoiling her rotten. You know Sonny – you know the guilt he harbors over Brenda."

The prince's tone became more somber. "He was planning on marrying the woman and ended up leaving her to keep her safe. A few weeks later, a bomb is planted in her car and that's the end of it. Elizabeth came into his life in the wake of the most painful loss he's ever had to endure. I say this in confidence, but I think that Sonny, whether intentionally or not is not the point, transferred some of his affections for Brenda onto Elizabeth."

There was definitely something wrong with that statement. "I don't think-"

"I don't mean it romantically," Nikolas clarified. "All I'm saying is that Sonny, especially so soon after Brenda's passing, needed someone to take care of. And enter Elizabeth, all alone in a strange world, who fits that role perfectly. And she, on the other hand, after spending all those weeks as being nothing more than a pawn in a family struggle, at the mercy of people that she didn't know and didn't trust had her best interests at heart, just needed to feel in control of something. Sonny gave her that – he gave her an apartment all her own, a new circle of friends, a new life. And, to be fair, he did spoil her by allowing her certain liberties in how she spoke to him and the other men."

Jason had to smirk at that. "Yeah, she's got him wrapped around her finger."

"And everyone knows it," Nikolas agreed with a matching smirk. "It's a complex dynamic at work there, Jason. I would advise you not to jump to any conclusions too quickly. People – especially a person like Elizabeth – have the habit of surprising you when you least expect it."

Oh, he didn't doubt that the little brat was full of surprises. "From what you know, how involved is she in the organization?"

"Considering that the first time she met Sonny, she received two slugs to show for it?" Nikolas remarked dryly. "Well, I'll put it this way: since being taken under his wing, Elizabeth has been to all the organizational dinners and functions and has seen Sonny kill three men with his bare hands."

He chuckled to himself as Jason gaped. "And to think that the other brainless chits in this town wonder why she's not interested in shopping and music and Johnny Depp like the rest of them."

"Sonny didn't mention that."

The prince nodded. "He doesn't like to talk about it. And Elizabeth never talks about it – getting it out of her was like pulling teeth. She's very loyal to him and won't talk about anything that implicates him even in the slightest. I just had a feeling that something was bothering her and after a while, she finally admitted to it."

Jason cocked his head to the side. "It doesn't bother her?"

"What the two of you do for a living?" Nikolas shook his head with a grimace, as if it were the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. "No, no. She knows that Sonny does what he does – in terms of the violence – to keep her safe. And she knows that you do what you do in order to keep Sonny safe." Again, the prince laughed to himself. "You should see her and Taggert get into it if ever she or Sonny are hauled into the PCPD."

Jason groaned, not even wanting to picture it. "Don't tell me Taggert hassles her, too."

"Calls her Anger Girl and everything," Nikolas grinned. "He got lonely and bored after you left, you know."

He snorted. "Good to know. She's never…been in jail or anything, right?"

His friend shrugged. "Spent some time in a holding cell a couple times. DA Baldwin just hates her, so he's finally gotten a clue and has decided not to bother with her anymore. He never gets anywhere."

"Does she have any other friends in town?"

"She's very good friends with Stan Johnson," he replied instantly. "They've been as thick as thieves ever since she took her position – excuse me, her _unofficial _position. We wouldn't want to discredit your Mister Spinelli."

Jason smirked as Nikolas thought. "She doesn't get along with Lucky or Lulu at all, which is completely understandable. There's your sister Emily, but they're not very close. They've only had the occasion of meeting a few times over the past few years. Er, she's friendly with your Max and Milo Giambetti, and that Ritchie Keynes fellow. Other than that…"

"That's fine," Jason assured him. "I was just wondering."

Nikolas grinned, amused. "You sure do seem inquisitive, though. Go ahead – keep asking, I'll tell you what you want to know. Let's see, Elizabeth Webber. Her middle name is Imogene, her favorite dessert is ice cream, her favorite country to visit is Morocco, tied with Egypt, she's an absolute wildcat in bed, she hates the color yellow because it reminds her of the daffodils in Audrey's yard-"

"Okay, whoa," Jason interrupted, holding up his hand. _Wildcat in bed?_ "So…you and Elizabeth were…together?"

Nikolas shrugged. "Yes and no."

Jason waited, but he didn't elaborate. "Yeah?"

"Off and on," the prince replied, as if that was any better a response. "We never tried our hand at a relationship…just think of it as being 'friends with benefits,' I suppose."

Yeah, he'd rather not think about it at all. "Oh."

"Absolutely wonderful girl," Nikolas repeated, as if the bombshell he'd dropped was no big deal. "I'm telling you, Jason, if I was a one-woman-man…" He frowned when his answering machine beeped, and reluctantly got up to see to it. "She takes some getting used to, but remember what I said: give her a chance. I think you'll like her. Yes, Janet, what is it?"

_"Sire, your uncle Stefan just faxed over the papers. He says he needs your signature immediately. Shall I bring them in?"_

Nikolas glanced apologetically at Jason, who waved off his chagrin and indicated that he should probably be leaving anyway. "Yes, Janet, that'll be fine."

"So much for the morning off, huh?"

The prince grinned in exasperation. "Yes, but what can you do? Are you sure you have to be going?"

Jason nodded as Nikolas's secretary entered with a manila folder. "Yeah, I've gotta check back in with Sonny and make sure Spinelli's doing okay. Call whenever you're on the mainland – we'll shoot pool at Jake's like before."

Nikolas nodded as the secretary extended the papers. "Sure, that'd be great. We'll invite Sonny and my uncle Stefan along – Sonny's the only one that Uncle enjoys losing money to."

Jason had to laugh at that. "Yeah, we'll do that. See you later."

The secretary, a tall, attractive blonde in a blue skirt, was looking impatient and tried extending the papers again. "Sire?"

"Wait til we're alone," Nikolas purred, tweaking her chin and gracing her with a lascivious smile that left the young woman entirely bewildered.

Jason chuckled at the innuendo and let himself out of the main room. Some things never changed.

* * *

He stopped by the warehouse to get some pertinent files that Stan had left in his office for him and it was past lunchtime by the time Jason made it back to the penthouse.

"How's it going?"

"Almost done, Stone Cold," Spinelli answered, furiously clicking away. "I designed an intricate search algorithm and put it against all the largest mainframes across the country – if there's so much as a ticket for littering, I found it. And now it's just running through the very last guy on my list, so I should be done in a few minutes."

The news was uplifting. "Good – you gonna hand it in to Sonny after that?"

Spinelli nodded. "Stone Cold, can you do me a huge favor?"

"Depends."

"Can you casually check if the Dragon has finished her task yet?" the boy asked hopefully. "Infiltrate the enemy abode and do some reconnaissance, so to speak?"

Reconnaissance was his specialty. "Fine."

"Oh, thank you, most beneficent Stone Cold-"

"Yeah, yeah, just finish your thing," Jason replied, rolling his eyes and stepping back out into the hallway. Honestly, sometimes he had no idea how Spinelli could string the oddest words together and think, somewhere under his beanie, that they made sense together.

Max nodded at him and opened the door to Sonny's penthouse where Jason found his friend seated on the couch with the morning newspaper. That was one thing about Sonny: he always made time to read the entire paper every single day, even if he had to stay up late at night to do it.

The mobster nodded at his partner. "Hey. You get what you needed from the warehouse?"

Jason nodded. "Stan left the information in my office."

"Good, good," Sonny replied, flipping through the Features section. A long pause and then, "so how's the kid doing with the background check?"

"Designing intricate algorithms," Jason responded automatically. That was the only part of the conversation he had actually understood. Also, something about littering.

"Elizabeth, too," Sonny murmured. "Algorithms."

Yeah, the two of them were completely clueless and didn't even know how to hide it.

"Is she done yet?" Jason asked casually, taking a seat on the arm of the couch.

Sonny glanced at him out of the corner of his eyes and shook his head. "No. She worked all through the night, fell asleep around sunrise, the poor kid. I bet she'll be done by tomorrow morning. She likes to do a thorough job."

"Spinelli, too," Jason agreed. "But he also knows how to work fast."

Sonny ignored the barb. "Mm."

Jason drummed his fingers on the armrest and then got up to get himself a beer from the kitchen. When he came back to the main room, he could hear Elizabeth thumping around upstairs.

"You eaten lunch yet?" Sonny asked absently, flipping through the few remaining pages of his section.

Jason shook his head. "No."

"You wanna go get something?" his partner suggested. "Kelly's, the No Name, whatever."

"Sure," Jason answered, inexplicably pleased that Sonny was asking him instead of checking with his domineering little ward. "We'll take Spinelli."

Sonny stopped himself just before he was about to roll his eyes. "Sure, it'll do the kid good to get some fresh air. Is he ready to go?"

"He will be soon," Jason replied smugly.

As if on cue, Elizabeth Webber came waltzing down the stairs with her purse and cell phone in hand. She smiled warmly at Sonny, who was folding up his paper, and sent a wary look Jason's way.

Jason stared blandly at the young woman as she walked past him toward the desk, having already taken it into her mind to ignore him. Today, she was wearing a pair of cutoff jean capris that reached her knees along with a long, silhouette-skimming green t-shirt and a pair of brown pumps. Polished and perfect, as always. Jason wondered how nuclear she'd go if she spilled something on her shirt or if one of her bobby pins slipped out.

"You done with your checks yet?"

Elizabeth glanced at him coolly as she set about transferring her items from last night's purse to this afternoon's purse. "Not yet. I'm getting there. I made a complex encoded-"

"Algorithm, yeah, yeah, we know," Jason muttered, sliding down from the armrest onto the couch next to Sonny. "So, still not done yet, huh?"

"I believe that was what I just said," she reminded him wryly, pausing to check her email on her phone. "I don't like to rush these things – I like to do a good, thorough job."

"I do, too, O Vivacious One," Spinelli beamed, waltzing in through the open penthouse door just then with a thick file tucked under his arm. "But I like to be quick about it, too."

"Hm, I bet you're quick at a lot of things," Elizabeth muttered absently under her breath, making Spinelli frown and Jason stare in surprise. "Well, whatever, nerd. I'm on my way out, so I'll see you guys later."

"Wait, wait, wait." This confused Spinelli. "You're not even _done _with your background checks but you're going to take an hour out and go to lunch?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "My program's still clicking away in my room; it'll turn up all the hits and print them out. There's nothing I need to do. So, yeah, I'm taking off for lunch. See you later."

Spinelli looked at her as the brunette skipped out the door, then down at the file in his hands. Something wasn't right. There was no way that the Dragon would just take off in the midst of their neck-in-neck competition. There had to be something he was missing…

"Spinelli, Jason and I were going to go to lunch, so come on," Sonny said, tipping his head toward the door. "You ready? Let's go."

Spinelli looked at the mobster and again at the file in his hands. "Your offer is most kind, Mister Corinthos Sir, but the Jackal feels that he must spend some more time digging up skeletons."

And with that, he marched out of the penthouse with his folder, fully set on getting right back to his computer.

Jason rolled his eyes. "He was done already – I don't know what he's doing."

Sonny shrugged, unconcerned, and grabbed his keys from off the desk. "That's okay, let him take as much time as he needs. Background checks are kind of Elizabeth's specialty – she can do them in her sleep."

"Not as good as Spinelli," Jason returned as the two men headed out.

* * *

2:30 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber leaves Harborview Towers, headed for Kelly's Diner to have lunch with her friend Stan Johnson. Damien Spinelli leaves Penthouse IV for Penthouse II and opens up Princess Peach, who had been put in hibernation just five minutes prior._

2:43 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber arrives at Kelly's and selects a table. Stan Johnson has not arrived yet. Damien Spinelli has finished laying all his paperwork for each candidate on the floor of the living room and is ready to start working…again._

2:50 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber approaches two young men standing by the counter and politely inquires of the younger one if she might use his cell phone. He immediately offers it to her. She places an innocuous call to Stan Johnson, asking him what is holding him up. With her back to the man, she opens up a directory on his phone and views his received calls. Seeing that the men have been served their food, she walks over to the table to return his phone. She smiles sweetly and does not tell him that hers was working all along. Damien Spinelli has to use the bathroom. He decides to declare a temporary moratorium on orange soda._

2:55 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber plays with her napkin and drums her fingers on the tabletop as she pretends to wait impatiently for her companion. Damien Spinelli is finally ready to get to work…again._

3:00 P.M. – _Stan Johnson arrives at Kelly's, right on schedule. The young man who previously lent out his phone smiles when he sees that the young lady is no longer alone at her table. She returns his smile. Damien Spinelli pulls out a notebook and makes notations as to the code he wishes to add to his existing complex – yeah, we know, algorithm._

3:05 P.M. – _Stan Johnson and Elizabeth Webber are ready to order. A waitress brings them two sodas and tells them that she'll return with their food. Sonny Corinthos and Jason Morgan enter Kelly's. Stan Johnson smiles broadly and invites both of them over, accepting their decision to decline and seek another table. Elizabeth Webber beams at her guardian and arches a brow at his companion. He returns the gesture. The two young men seated at another table quickly stand, wipe off their places, and insist that Mr. Corinthos and Mr. Morgan take their seats since the diner is unusually crowded. Sonny and Jason accept. Damien Spinelli crosses out a section of the code he deems extraneous and resumes his notation anew._

3:15 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber and Stan Johnson are served two cheeseburgers, one with a slice of pineapple, and a side of cheesy fries. A young man enters the diner and looks around for a seat. Seeing that there are none for this man to take, Stan Johnson offers the man a seat at his table. Elizabeth Webber readily complies. The man gratefully accepts and after the waitress has taken his order, engages in small talk with the two strangers. Jason Morgan watches this exchange and looks questioningly at his friend; Sonny Corinthos shrugs and wipes his mouth with a napkin so Jason won't see him smirking. Damien Spinelli is almost finished entering his complicated addition into his existing program code. He glances periodically at his notebook to make sure he has the syntax right and is increasingly glad that he did not go out for lunch._

3:24 P.M. – _A couple at the counter settles its bill and leaves. Tammy wipes down the counter and the young man, seeing the available opening, thanks Stan Johnson and Elizabeth Webber and takes his food there so as not to impose any longer. Stan Johnson waits until the man is out of earshot before leaning closer and whispering to his companion. She responds with a bright grin and a mischievous wiggle of her eyebrows, expressions that please Stan. Jason Morgan watches this exchange quietly. Sonny Corinthos remarks that Jason has barely touched his number seven on rye, no onions. Damien Spinelli is pleased when his additional code turns up new hits on the candidates and waits excitedly as the program works through the loops._

3:35 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber is laughing so hard at something that Stan Johnson has said that some of her soda comes out of her nose. Across the diner, Sonny Corinthos calls out for her to take it easy. Jason Morgan is disgusted. Damien Spinelli is thrilled as new information comes through._

3:47 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber is too full to finish her fries. Nikolas Cassidine comes into the diner for an iced tea and sees his friends. He nods at Jason, remarking that he's up for that game of pool at Jake's later, and then takes a seat between Elizabeth Webber and Stan Johnson. She immediately pushes her fries toward him, imploring him to help her finish. The Prince initially resists but eventually acquiesces, and Sonny Corinthos watches Jason Morgan watch this scene. Elizabeth laughs when Nikolas licks the cheese off his fingers and teases him about his palate's plebian tastes. His reply is laden with innuendo. Elizabeth Webber laughs; Jason Morgan glowers; Sonny Corinthos and Stan Johnson roll their eyes. Damien Spinelli takes a chance and calls up Bernie to ask if there is a contact of theirs that knows about the relatively inconsequential street jobs pulled in the last few decades. Bernie says that the man that keeps all the records of street jobs is one of Elizabeth's main contacts for background checks and provides the number. Damien Spinelli tries not to fall off the couch with glee. He fails._

3:50 P.M. – _Thanks to Prince Cassidine's help, Elizabeth Webber is done with her fries. She stands up and declares that she would like ice cream. Stan Johnson immediately agrees, but Nikolas looks skeptical. The two drag him along anyway. Elizabeth doesn't even glance in the direction of Sonny Corinthos and Jason Morgan, who are still eating. This doesn't bother Sonny as much as it does Jason. Though to be fair, it doesn't bother him a_ lot. _But still. Damien Spinelli has the distinct feeling that his stomach is eating itself. Rather than face the ramifications of an internally cannibalistic body, he calls out for pineapple and jalapeno pizza. He waits for the email from Elizabeth's main contact_.

4:09 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber, Stan Johnson, and Nikolas Cassidine emerge from Elizabeth's favorite ice cream shop with their chosen treats and decide to walk along the docks. Sonny Corinthos and Jason Morgan finish their meals and decide to head over to the warehouse on Pier 52 to talk with Benny and Bernie. Damien Spinelli still waits for his email. His program is almost done running and has turned up new information on almost all of the candidates. Most of the new information is about jury duty and the occasional hearing, but he is pleased with his last-minute ingenuity._

4:21 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber looks out at Spoon Island and tells Nikolas that she wants to come over some time and ride horses with him again. The Prince is about to reply with a play on the word 'ride' but reconsiders and tells her that she knows she is most welcome whenever she wants to come over. Sonny Corinthos asks Jason if he doesn't mind waiting while he places a phone call to an associate. Jason accepts and heads over to the windows overlooking the harbor. Damien Spinelli receives his email along with an apology for its tardiness. It was the same email that the contact had sent Elizabeth earlier that morning. Damien Spinelli is thrilled that the Dragon did not succeed in outwitting him._

4:29 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber drops her lip balm and bends over to pick it up. From the windows in the warehouse along Pier 52, Jason Morgan can make out her slender but curvaceous form. He is suddenly reminded of Nikolas Cassidine's claim that Elizabeth is a wildcat in bed. As he is remembering the remark and imagining what it entails, Sonny Corinthos comes up behind him and calls that they can leave now. Jason Morgan quickly shakes the thoughts away and immediately follows, inwardly mortified to have been 'caught' thinking them at all. Damien Spinelli peruses his lengthy email and one of the notations gives him an idea. He immediately picks up his notebook again and begins jotting down a new section of code._

4:38 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber says goodbye to Prince Nikolas Cassidine. After the prince has departed, she and Stan Johnson immediately head over to the part of the docks where they know a lot of Sonny Corinthos's men to hang out. Jason Morgan arrives at Harborview Towers in a foul mood and escapes to his penthouse. Damien Spinelli says hello and is yelled at._

5:00 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber is seated on a crate of coffee with Stan Johnson listening as the manager of the warehouse tells the entire gathering of his first time crossing the equator with the United States Marines. Sonny Corinthos picks up his paper and chuckles to himself. Damien Spinelli decides to lay low and continues working silently as Jason Morgan stomps into the kitchen for a cold beer. He says nothing when his roommate comes back, steps over the carefully laid out stacks of paper, and flips on the television. He imagines that Jason might have had a run-in with the Dragon, and such a thing would make anyone cranky._

6:30 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber and Stan Johnson finally excuse themselves from the gathering and thank the men for letting them hang out. As they walk up the docks toward Kelly's again, Stan asks if she got the information she wanted. Elizabeth replies that indeed she did, but she's not done yet. She invites Stan over to watch television, an offer the young man accepts. Damien Spinelli is just about finished pulling every bit of information he can think of and is growing excited at the prospect of putting it all together. Jason Morgan tells him to knock it off. Damien Spinelli knocks it off._

6:55 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber and Stan Johnson step out onto the fourteenth floor of Harborview Towers and head for Penthouse IV. Jason Morgan has just stepped out of his penthouse to talk to Sonny Corinthos and follows them in. Elizabeth heads upstairs to check on her program and compile the results, promising Stan that she won't be too long. Stan Johnson makes himself comfortable on the couch, an action that irritates Jason Morgan. The fact that there is no reason for him to be irritated only irritates him more. Damien Spinelli is glad that his friend has left the room and takes the opportunity to dance a victory lap around the sofa._

7:06 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber comes down the stairs dressed in a pair of striped pajama pants and a solid colored t-shirt. Her hair is pulled back in two meticulous French braids. This irritates Jason Morgan as well. Stan Johnson has selected the first season of "Animaniacs" from her DVD collection and Elizabeth inserts it into the DVD player. Jason finishes his conversation with Sonny Corinthos and leaves the penthouse. In Penthouse II, Damien Spinelli is doing some strange dance that involves lying flat on his back and rotating anti-clockwise on the floor. Jason Morgan takes this in and then heads for the stairs up to his bedroom._

8:00 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber grimaces and makes gagging noises when Sonny Corinthos calls Jason Morgan and invites him and his roommate over for dinner. Damien Spinelli is waiting for his printouts when Jason comes down the stairs and tells him to get his ass next door for food. Damien thanks him for the considerate and eloquent invitation. Jason Morgan biffs him upside the head._

8:10 P.M. – _Elizabeth Webber announces that she had too much to eat for lunch and will be having cereal on the couch with Stan Johnson. Stan Johnson tells her to speak for herself and gladly accepts a helping of Sonny Corinthos's manicotti. Jason Morgan arrives without his roommate. _

8:15 P.M. – _Once Stan Johnson is seated on the couch again, Elizabeth Webber finds that she cannot resist and begins picking at his plate. Finally, Sonny Corinthos gets up and presents Elizabeth with her own helping as Jason Morgan rolls his eyes. Damien Spinelli is finished with his background checks._

"Mister Corinthos Sir!"

The door to Penthouse IV was practically kicked down and there stood Spinelli, his chest puffed out as he brandished a file that was two times thicker than what it had been before.

"The Jackal is done!"

"The Jackal kicked my door."

"The Jackal apologizes, most generous Mister Corinthos Sir."

"The Jackal better not to it again."

"The Jackal humbly promises-"

"Yeah, yeah," Sonny interrupted, waving the kid over. "Come on, we're having dinner. I hope you like manicotti. The kids are having theirs over there with the T.V."

"Not kids," Stan and Elizabeth spoke up in unison.

Sonny glared at the backs of their heads as an elderly squirrel on the screen threatened to put dynamite down the pants of a female walrus at the movie theatre. "You're watching cartoons."

"_You're_ a cartoon."

"Thank you, sweetheart." Sonny shook his head and gestured to the empty chair. "Sit, Spinelli."

"First, Mister Corinthos Sir, the Jackal would like to present you with ten completed background checks. Every single parking ticket, drug bust, heck, even bad hair day is documented here," Spinelli said proudly, dropping the folder on the dining table. "Read it at your leisure."

This had grabbed Elizabeth's attention and she peered at the boy over the back of the couch. "You're already _done_?"

Both Jason and Spinelli puffed out their chests. "Certainly, Dragon," the boy replied with a dramatic sweep of his hand. "It's not easy to be fast and thorough, but the Jackal sure makes it look that way."

To their surprise, Elizabeth rolled her eyes and returned to her food and the animated squirrel. "Whatever. You're not done. You didn't do a thorough enough job."

Jason looked at Spinelli to see that the insult hadn't landed. "Not so, Dragon. I revised my searches three times and even spoke to David Cartwell – I did a thorough job."

Elizabeth spun around again. "Where did you get that name?"

Spinelli grinned slyly. "Sorry – I have to protect my sources from the wrath of the fire-breathing Dragon."

The brunette glowered, making Jason smirk. "I'm going to _kill _Bernie."

"I'm sorry, I really am," Spinelli shrugged, looking anything but. "But slow and steady does not win the race."

"Just leave them over there, on the desk," Sonny instructed. "Then eat before it gets cold."

Spinelli did as he was told and cast a superior look Elizabeth's way, but she was too busy singing the Piano Rag. "Thank you, Mister Corinthos Sir. I've heard much about your culinary skills."

Sonny grunted and dropped more on his plate in way of reply. Spinelli happily dug in and traded smug smirks with Jason across the table all through dinner. They had definitely put the Dragon in her place.

Two and a half hours later, Elizabeth finally got up off the couch. Spinelli was beginning to yawn and got up as well, ready to excuse himself and head off to bed after a job well done. Elizabeth disappeared upstairs as Stan finished watching the last animated short, and then the young man picked up their plates and glasses from dinner and dessert and brought them into the kitchen. By the time he finished loading them into the dishwasher and cleaning off the dining table, Elizabeth was hopping down the steps.

Jason gaped when he saw what she was wearing. She had been in her pajamas just ten minutes earlier so he had assumed that she would be spending the rest of the night indoors. Not so. Elizabeth was currently wearing a fitted black tank under a little denim jacket and a tight, frayed denim mini-skirt. The outfit was marred by a pair of black leggings that she had on under the skirt – as if there were something wrong with showing off legs like that – but she made up for it with a pair of Fuck Me high-heeled sandals.

Sonny barely glanced up. "You heading out, sweetheart?"

"Yup, me and Stan are going to Jake's," she replied. "Don't wait up. It's going to be a long night of debauchery."

Sonny just mumbled something in return; it was Jason and Spinelli who watched the scene, stunned.

"Wait – you haven't even finished your checks," Spinelli reminded her. "And you're going to head to Jake's?"

Next to him, Jason was wondering the same thing.

"Sure," the girl beamed, grabbing Stan by the elbow. "See you guys later!"

"Unreal," Spinelli muttered to Jason after the door had been shut. "And I'm telling you, that's why you never let a girl into the organization to handle this sort of stuff."

Sonny clapped him hard on the back and smiled good-naturedly. "I'll pretend I didn't hear that."


	6. Chapter 6

Hack 06

**Hack 06**

Sonny Corinthos soon discovered that six years abroad did not change a person's fundamental habits. Seventy-two months away from home had not changed the fact that Jason Morgan did not like breakfast, and that if Sonny didn't invite him over every morning for the first meal of the day, his best friend simply wouldn't eat it.

And that was why Jason and Spinelli began showing up at Penthouse IV every morning at exactly eight o'clock for breakfast. Contrary to what Sonny had thought, Spinelli wasn't the sort of boy to lounge around in bed until noon. His years of taking care of himself, and then the four spent running all over the world with Jason, had enabled Spinelli to train himself to fall asleep on command, and to make even three hours of sleep sustain him for a full day. The boy went to bed a little late sometimes, but he was always up with his roommate, usually with the sun and the birds.

"What's cooking, Mister Corinthos Sir?" Spinelli asked, making his way over to the dining table with Jason in tow.

"Belgian waffles, muffins, and orange juice and coffee," came the quick reply. "Sit, eat. Jason, over there."

Honestly, it was like pulling teeth with that one.

Jason grunted and sat down where Sonny told him to, drumming his fingers against the tablecloth as he waited for his coffee. There was no way he was touching _anything _before he had his morning coffee. Being at home after so long meant being afforded certain luxuries – a warm bed every night, enough food, peace and quiet (when Spinelli wasn't blasting Underoath) and a cold beer – and Jason had rapidly grown very used to, if not dependent on, his morning cup of coffee.

Sonny glanced over at Spinelli as he poured his best friend a mug of their Columbian Roast. "Don't you start summer classes today?"

Spinelli nodded, trying not to look too depressed at the thought. "Yeah, Stone Cold rigged it so that I got accepted to PCU's English program."

Jason didn't bother to deny it. It was true: he had called up the President of the university the morning after they had returned home and explained to the man that his academy _would _be accepting a certain Mister Damien Spinelli into the summer program _and _general undergraduate program in the major of his choice. The man was smart; he had agreed without further persuasion.

During Spinelli's 'meeting' with the Dean of Admissions, he had basically been told that the university was very pleased to accept his enrollment into its undergraduate program. Spinelli had been puzzled, and yammered on about legal documentation and his transcripts until he realized that Stone Cold had a hand in whatever was going on. So after that he shut his mouth and listened, only opening it again to say that he accepted their offer of enrollment and that he would like to join the English track.

Upon getting home from his meeting and yelling at the Dragon for ditching him on campus, Spinelli had cornered his roommate. Jason had been in no mood to answer his questions, but the boy wouldn't let up. He got Jason to admit to his part in the deal and when he asked what would become of the tuition, a very uncomfortable Jason, who felt that any minute now he would be expected to declare his bonds of friendship with the teenager, gruffly informed Spinelli that he could pay back the amount when he took on the position of the official hacker for the Corinthos-Morgan organization, and left the room.

That little exchange, far from putting the thought of money and Jason's precise reasons for going to such great lengths for him out of Spinelli's head, only emphasized to the boy how crucial his obtaining the title was. And it only made him that much more determined to beat out Elizabeth, at whatever cost.

"Yeah, I'm enrolled in Critical Methods, Style, and English 115," Spinelli was telling Sonny. "The 115 just because I guess they want to be sure I can read and write and still sound marginally intelligent. Style is going to be a snooze-fest; the Jackal is already well-versed in the idiosyncratic methods of your English grammar and composition. Critical Methods – not worried. I'm pretty sure I've read most of the books they're teaching, anyway."

"That's good," Sonny replied blandly, not even bothering to disguise the fact that he was barely listening.

Spinelli tapped his fingers on the table and fidgeted, and after a long pause finally asked, "So, did you get around to looking at my background checks yet?"

"Not yet," the mob boss replied smoothly. "I'm still waiting on Elizabeth's. It wouldn't be fair," he added, seeing Jason frown at the thought of his charge getting short-changed once more in favor of his own ward. "Gotta keep everything nice and fair, right?"

Spinelli didn't detect the edge in his voice and just nodded happily. "Yes, Sir, Mister Corinthos Sir, the Jackal fully understands your need to be just and even-handed, and he commends you for it most heartily."

"Great."

"But it will be on the record that the Jackal finished at least twelve hours before the Vivacious One?"

Sonny nodded. "I'll remember that you finished first, Spinelli."

"Morning, people," Elizabeth sang out as she hopped down the steps with a manila folder tucked under her arm. Her class started in an hour, and the young woman was fully ready to take on another day of assistant-molding undergraduate minds. Dressed in a dark blue knee-length skirt and a white oxford shirt with blue pinstripes, she even looked the part.

"Good morning, sweetheart," Sonny smiled warmly as she kissed his cheek and took her place at his right hand. "You sleep okay? What time did you get in last night? I didn't even hear you."

"Stan and I got back around three," she replied easily, snapping her fingers at Jason to pass her the maple syrup. The enforcer glared but did as he was bid. "Yeah, it was a late one; I'm going to need two cups of that great coffee of yours. Oh, and before I forget, here are your checks."

Sonny was already reaching for the file she had deposited on the far side of the table. Jason and Spinelli watched curiously as the mob boss disregarded the computer printouts and instead reached for three sheets of pink paper that Elizabeth had stapled together and laid on top of the stack.

"Ah, here it is. Thank you, sweetheart."

Spinelli looked at Jason and then Sonny and back again, concerned as his hopeful new boss began to carefully read the type print. "Uh, Mister Corinthos Sir? Would you like me to get mine for you? They're right on the desk over there…"

"What? Oh – yeah, sure, Spinelli, do that. Thanks." Sonny continued to skim the pink printout as Spinelli hurried over to his desk and returned with the files. "Just put them here – thanks."

The boy did as he was told and stared at Sonny, waiting expectantly for him to pick up the file. After several minutes, Sonny realized that the boy was staring and reluctantly put down Elizabeth's pink report. He pulled out both sets of computer printouts and matched them up on the far side of the table, away from the milk and the maple syrup.

"Okay, let's see…"

Spinelli moved so that he could look over Sonny's shoulder. "Oh, this is Jay Morales. I found two parking tickets, one ticket for an illegal U-turn, a citation that might imply he was homeless at a certain point in time, and documentation of a stint in rehab."

Sonny was nodding. "Yup, Elizabeth's got the same thing. Good. Next."

The boy quickly moved both reports aside, happy to be Sonny's assistant while his rival stuffed her face. "Okay. Martin Gale, ran three street jobs for three different dealers. He was charged with two counts of theft but released without conviction. Also charged with one count of battery. Not your best candidate, Mister Corinthos Sir."

Sonny was nodding. "Yup, Elizabeth's got the same thing. Good. Show me the next one."

"Ethan Caddagh. Two speeding tickets, one for expired insurance. Clean as a whistle otherwise. Same goes for his cousin, Adam Lamont."

"Yup, Elizabeth's got the same thing. Good."

This continued all the way through the ten final candidates of the selection process. Spinelli moved smoothly through all the applicants and was thrilled to learn that even though he was completely new to the American East Coast crime syndicate business, he had done just as good a job as the Dragon. He had found every bit of information she did – every last charge, every last citation, every last inconsequential street job – and he had done it _faster _than her.

Boom. He was _so _in.

"Great, looks good," Sonny announced, closing both files and stacking them one on top of the other. "You both came up with the same information – very thorough, complete job, both of you."

"And the Jackal completed his first," Spinelli couldn't help but remind the mobster.

"The Jackal did complete his first," Sonny allowed, reaching once more for the pink, stapled printout.

"So does that mean that the Jackal has won this round?" he asked hopefully, grinning at his roommate who was silently sipping his coffee through his whole exchange and looking pretty pleased, if Spinelli thought so himself.

"Not quite," Sonny murmured, leaning back in his seat to read.

The grin fell off of Spinelli's face. "What now?"

Jason, too, was arching a brow at his best friend. "Why the hell not?"

Sonny looked up from the report, his gaze deceptively bland and challenging either one to fight him on this. "Because Elizabeth did a better job."

"What the hell kind of-"

"It's all right here," he shrugged, waving the report as Elizabeth smirked against the rim of her Hello Kitty coffee mug (a very misguided Sweetest Day gift from Sonny one year). "This is what I was waiting for."

Jason slammed his mug down onto the table and got up, stalking over to Sonny's side of the table so he and Spinelli could inspect the mysterious but all-important document. Elizabeth leaned back in her seat and tented her fingers behind her head, a smug little grin playing on her lips. Oh, those silly boys – thinking they actually had a chance. Nerds.

"_Jay Morales_," Sonny began reading, picking the first candidate and briefly relaying parts of his personal description that Elizabeth had penned. "_A modest dresser, no name brands, very clean cut…wears a nicotine patch…keeps the gum in his shirt pocket…slightly visible scars on his wrist, most likely from his days as a heroin addict…polite, respectful, inconspicuous, and generally tries to keep to himself and not get in anyone's way._ See?"

"He came into Kelly's and couldn't find a seat," Elizabeth spoke up, thoroughly enjoying the look on Jason's face, which was a mix of disgust, disbelief, and profound irritation. "Stan and I let him sit with us until a spot cleared. Nice guy – just needs a break, you know? He's the sort that will work like a dog to move up in the organization, and he also projects the image of a reformed ne'er-do-well, and we can always use that."

Sonny did his absolute best to fight a smirk and turned to the pink sheet again. "_Martin Gale…loner, surly…down on his luck…gets violent when drunk…after a few months of a steady paycheck, he'll most likely pack up and leave. That's his pattern. Not a recommended hire_. Good to know, don't you think?"

"He basically sat hunched over the bar counter the whole night at Jake's," Elizabeth added indignantly. "He didn't even look up when I said that I'd do body shots off the first guy that took off his shirt!"

Sonny, who by now was perfectly able to tell Elizabeth's for-shock-value-only fibs apart from her authentic real-life-dose-of-crazy anecdotes, barely lifted his head. Jason and Spinelli, however, were stunned.

"And then after he'd tied on a few, he nearly belted Coleman when he suggested easing up a bit."

The mobster nodded, flipping to the next page. "Good, good. Oh, here's something. Ethan Caddagh, Spinelli's model citizen." He cleared his throat. "_Polite, helpful, gentlemanly, eager to please and serve…_"

"He was one of the guys that got up and gave you and Jason his seat," Elizabeth reminded them. "The other guy was Adam. I got to meet up with him at Jake's, too."

"_…eager to please and serve…working for Clemenza_."

Sonny looked up at Elizabeth, his dark eyes serious. "You sure?"

The brunette nodded. "I memorized a recurring number from his list of received calls. I traced it later – Clemenza's enforcer. They're trying to plant the guy in your organization."

The corners of Sonny's mouth curved downward until he appeared to almost sneer at the report he held. "And what about this Adam Lamont guy?"

Elizabeth shrugged innocently. "Read on."

"_Adam Lamont…polite, eager to please and serve…amazing six-pack._" He looked up. "What's a six-pack?"

"It means he looks fan-fucking-tastic without his shirt on."

The mobster rolled his eyes and resumed reading. "_…witty…friendly…green eyes to die for…_Seriously, Elizabeth."

"Read on."

"_…likes to tell dirty jokes when buzzed…likes to recite dirty limericks when trashed…in the habit of admitting things he shouldn't when he's completely blasted, like the fact that he and his pal are going to help a certain someone snow over old Corinthos._"

He looked up abruptly as Jason and Spinelli began to droop, admitting defeat. "I'm not old."

"Mind over matter," Elizabeth agreed, tapping her temple. "Okay, well, I've gotta get to class, so happy reading. Lemme know who won the round."

Sonny smiled down at the printout and flipped to the last page. "I think we all know the answer to that."

Jason grumbled something obscene under his breath and roughly brushed past Spinelli on his way to refill his coffee mug.

"Great," Elizabeth beamed, picking up her black handbag and a dog-eared copy of _L'ecriture du Disastre_. "This was fun; be sure to let me know when and where the next challenge is. I'll be there with bells on. But right now I gotta jet – that Critical Methods class isn't going to assistant-teach itself."

Spinelli stopped in his tracks on his way to get his own messenger bag. "Wait a second – what class did you say you're TA-ing?"

The brunette gave him a strange look. "Critical Methods with Dr. Jennifer Jackson. Why?" At Spinelli's lack of an answer, a slow grin spread across her face. "No way – you're in that class, aren't you?"

Spinelli muttered something under his breath and glared at his equally aggravated roommate. "This is all _your _fault – wanting the Jackal to get an education."

"Oh, this is going to be _too _fun," Elizabeth sighed happily, looping her arm through his elbow and yanking him toward the door. "Thank you, Universe, for always coming through when I need a win. Get a move on, nerd – you wouldn't wanna be late. I sure hope that you did your reading, because today's the day that I get to call on people for answers."

As if Damien Spinelli didn't need another reason to hate school, Elizabeth "Dragon" Webber was his TA. It was brutal. She usually led discussion with the professor and had the annoying habit of asking questions – questions that he, Spinelli, was supposed to know the answer to. To be fair, she didn't isolate him among the class and call on him exclusively just to be mean, but she did occasionally direct the discussion his way.

And that really interfered with the serious dozing he was attempting.

And after two full hours of barely managing to say something intelligent enough to get the professor and TA off his back, Spinelli was seriously ready to go home and chill.

The first thing he saw when he opened the door to Penthouse II and staggered inside was Jason. His roommate was standing in his pajama bottoms (really, were some people _that _unproductive that they couldn't even get dressed in the morning?) on the balcony and trying to wave away the birds that would frequently come back to roost there. Naturally, this was unacceptable behavior.

"No, no, Stone Cold, please!" Spinelli yelped, making a dash for the balcony. "Don't do that! Don't scare them!"

Jason turned around and looked at him as if he'd lost his mind. "They're just pigeons – and they're shitting everywhere."

"They're not pigeons," Spinelli corrected, insinuating himself between his unofficial mentor and the ledge. The birds, seeing Jason back off, swooped lower and hesitantly dropped onto the balcony. "They're doves, and you can't scare them away. They're ours."

Again, Jason had no idea what was going on. "Whose?"

The boy shuffled his feet awkward. "Mine and the Dragon's." Seeing that Jason was staring at him as if he'd just sprouted a second head, Spinelli quickly redirected his attention. "See? This one is Derrida – he's always squawking. And that quiet little one is Lacan. Baudrillard is the one puffing his feathers and this…" He allowed the bird to hop onto his fingers and held him toward Jason who took a step back, disgusted. "This is Levinas, and he's a punk ass little bitch that doesn't know how to get along with any of the others."

Jason stared at the kid. "What?"

Spinelli shrugged and let Levinas hop onto the balcony ledge again. "That's what the Dragon said."

"Whatever," Jason muttered, stalking into the living room and past the pool table. "I'll call Pest Control tomorrow. How was school?"

The boy rolled his eyes and trotted after his roommate. "Terrible. It's like I've always told you, Stone Cold – the Jackal would do best just hanging out with you. That's worked for the last four years, you know?"

But Jason shook his head. "No. You're going to school, you're getting a degree, and you're going to shut up about it."

Spinelli made a face at Jason's retreating back, managing to pull his tongue back and right his features just before the older man turned around to glare at him. "Fine. If it is silence you desire, Stone Cold, it is silence that you will get. And besides, the Jackal has important things to devote himself to at this moment, anyway."

He arched a sandy brow. "Homework?"

"Sucking-up work," Spinelli corrected, bracing an arm on the back of the couch and hopping over it and onto the cushions. Princess Peach was hibernating on the coffee table and he quickly roused her and pulled up his Netbeans application.

"It was most unfortunate that the Dragon pulled out ahead of the Jackal in the first round," he continued, pulling up a new coding sheet. "Honestly, the Jackal cannot be expected to quietly suffer such unjust humiliation, especially when he is the far superior hacker."

Jason, who had only understood half of this, peered over Spinelli's shoulder. "So what are you doing?"

"I'm making a new application for Mister Corinthos Sir. I took a look at the employee database that Bernie and Benny have in place now and, let me tell you, the Dragon has _really _been taking it easy. I don't know if she forgot, or if she doesn't care, or if she just doesn't know how, but someone really needs to update and streamline the system. And that's where the Jackal comes in."

He rubbed his palms together gleefully and chortled. "I'm going to design the best database program in the history of ever, Stone Cold. It'll be a great way to get every bit of information about the employees at Mister Corinthos's fingertips, if he ever needs to look up something or organize shift schedules or anything like that. And he can always add to it, like say if Ritchie and Francis get into it and he doesn't want them on the same shift schedule because they'll just whale on each other, he can add a notation and see it next time he organizes schedules."

"Sounds good." Jason backed away from the couch and headed toward the stairs to change. Nikolas had been harping on him to play poker sometime and he figured it was as good an afternoon as any. "Good luck."

"The Jackal doesn't need luck," Spinelli called after him. "What he needs is simply to vanquish the evil Dragon."

Back in her temporary bedroom at Penthouse IV, Elizabeth was sitting on her bed with her laptop and one of Sonny's homemade mango milkshakes, idly fiddling with her applications. She had her camera channel open and could hear their dialogue, and she chuckled to herself as she pulled up her own 'purchased' copy of Netbeans (she was _so _going to jail) and clicked open a new coding sheet.

So Red Crosse wanted to vanquish the Dragon?

The good knight was toast.

* * *

_Late that Sunday morning…_

Jason Morgan was already popping another button of his dress shirt as Sonny let him and Spinelli into his penthouse after mass. It was absolutely boiling outside, and he was wrecked. As he stepped into the apartment, he was immediately accosted with a draft of cold air that sent chills down his spine.

"Oh, it's _freezing _in here," Spinelli sighed with relief. "The Jackal is most grateful for this disparity in climatological conditions."

"That's not a word," Sonny informed him dryly.

"Why do you keep it so cold?" Jason asked, taking off his suit jacket even though he had a feeling he would be putting it back on in five minutes due to the A/C. "You never used to."

"Elizabeth likes it cool," he replied easily, loosening the tie he always wore to the Queen of Angels. "We usually keep the A/C on all through the summer."

"Yeah, gotta watch out for all that fresh air," Jason muttered, taking a seat on the couch.

"Can I get something to drink, Mister Corinthos Sir?"

Sonny didn't turn around from the wet bar where he was currently pouring himself and Jason a glass of ice water. "Soda's in the fridge – you have Elizabeth to thank for that, by the way. I never let the stuff into my house."

"Thank you, Mister Corinthos Sir."

Jason watched idly as Spinelli wandered happily into the kitchen. Two seconds later, he heard Elizabeth's voice and the brunette was soon coming out of the room herself with a glass of murky brown liquid in her hand.

"Hey, Sonny, Jason," she greeted them, saying her guardian's name more warmly than Jason's, which she pronounced as if she were tasting something rank. "Back from the service already?"

Sonny nodded and took a seat in his favorite armchair. "Yeah. It was nice."

"I have no doubt," Elizabeth replied sweetly as Spinelli came out of the kitchen with a glass of Pepsi. "How's Father Coates doing?"

"He's good."

"Good."

"He seems nice," Spinelli spoke up after a pause. "He welcomed me and Stone Cold to town and said that if I ever needed anything, I could come see him. I've always had really good relationships with men of the church – and not in an it's-okay-if-you-touch-me-there way," he added when Elizabeth gave him a strange look. "The pastor back in Toscagnana always looked out for me when I was a kid. I slept in the loft in the chapel sometimes when I didn't have anywhere to stay."

Elizabeth nodded and moved around an end table to take a seat next to Sonny. Sadly, this was on the opposite end of the same couch that Jason occupied. "Father Coates really is a nice guy. We've known him ever since he came to the Queen of Angels, and he meant what he said about seeing him if you need anything."

While she spoke, Spinelli wandered around to the front of the couch and took a seat between his Stone Cold and his Dragon, and his gaze fell to her glass. "Hey, what are you drinking, O Vivacious One?"

Elizabeth swirled her glass, making the chunks of ice tinkle. "Equal parts green tea and Pepsi. There's a jug in the fridge if you want some."

"I might partake in your novel concoction later," Spinelli agreed, abruptly standing up from his seat and setting his glass on the coffee table – sans coaster. "But the Jackal just remembered that he has an after-church present for Mister Corinthos Sir. Your permission to leave, Mister Corinthos Sir?"

"Whatever," Sonny shrugged, getting up from his armchair. "I'll be down in a few minutes, so take your time."

Spinelli nodded and dashed toward the door while Sonny made his way upstairs to change out of his suit before it wrinkled, leaving Jason and Elizabeth alone on the couch. The young woman seemed content to ignore him and sipped her disgusting beverage calmly, not noticing the strange glance Jason cast her way.

"So how come you didn't come to mass with us?" he asked, undoing the cuffs of his shirt and folding them back. Unlike Sonny, he didn't give a damn if his clothes wrinkled.

Elizabeth lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug and looked back at him. "Why did _you _go? I never would have pegged you as the religious sort."

"I'm not," Jason replied slowly. "Not really. I mean, I have faith in something bigger, I guess, but…"

"Then why do you go?" she persisted.

"Out of respect for Sonny," he answered honestly. "When he gave me a job, he told me a lot about Catholicism and his own beliefs. So I started to go to mass with him every Sunday out of respect." The corner of his mouth quirked up slyly. "I'd think that as his _ward_, you'd show him the same respect."

Elizabeth snorted and gave him an arch look. "Respect? More like brainless mimicry, huh?"

Jason's expression soured. "No – more like _respect_."

The brunette wasn't intimidated and just shook her head, rising from the couch. "I'm not into _brainless mimicry_, Jason. I'm definitely not into doing something to keep up appearances that I don't believe in. And Sonny understands that – he's cool with it. He knows that just because we're family, it doesn't mean that I have to believe everything he believes. And that's good, because I definitely can't believe in any of that Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, Inc., stuff. I'm just a little surprised that you're on the opposite side of the fence here."

She was fooling around with the paperweights on Sonny's desk and was surprised to turn around and find that Jason was standing not four inches away from her.

"What do you mean?" he asked in a low voice, wondering if she would be intimidated by their proximity. After all, nothing else worked on the little brat and he was running out of options here. "Why do I surprise you?"

Elizabeth smiled slowly and claimed a small step toward him, tilting her head back and regarding him smugly. Jason hadn't expected that. "Because people like us, Jason, we don't believe in that sort of thing."

He leaned a little closer, close enough to notice the light sprinkling of freckles on the line of her shoulders. "People like us?"

The corner of her mouth twitched as she watched him, and Elizabeth wondered if Jason Morgan had any idea that she had his number. His combination of intimidation and seduction skills were entirely wasted on her, and the sooner he figured that out, the better for both of them.

"People like us," she repeated softly, skimming one hand down her side until it rested on the gentle flare of her hip and watching as Jason's eyes darted away quickly to follow the movement.

His gaze met hers again, and Elizabeth realized that she was close enough to discern the distinct gold that flecked his cerulean eyes. "And what do we believe?"

Oh, he was amusing, trying to be all slick. "People like us believe in the three pounds of meat sitting right here," she informed him softly, languidly tapping her temple three times.

"We have to; we can't believe in anything else after what we've been through," she continued, and Jason found that he didn't quite like it when she referred to her accident. That, combined with Sonny's imagery of her lying on the ground in a puddle of her own blood, made it an almost painful vision for Jason.

"Three pounds of meat," she repeated softly. "The difference between life and death for us. The difference between shooting a gun and typing on a keyboard, and being in a vegetative coma."

He snorted at her logic. "I don't-"

"Regeneration," she said, jabbing him lightly in the chest. "Where would we be if our brains weren't capable of it? Part of yours were left splattered on a tree; mine were on the pavement behind Kelly's."

Something clenched in his stomach as Jason realized just how _badly _he wanted not to have this conversation.

"But somehow, we recovered. It wasn't through faith. It wasn't through drinking holy water or saying a thousand Hail Mary's. Hell, we were barely conscious for the most important part of this recovery. Our brains healed and enabled our bodies to heal. That's the only reason you can see pictures and control your fingers enough to aim a shot and execute. It's the only reason that I can see colors and figure out what to write so that I can help keep Sonny out of jail or the hospital. _That _is what people like us believe in."

She looked up at him openly, not a hint of resentment or condescension in her voice. "Every time we do the smallest thing, our brain waves change. Every time I look at a blank computer screen or you see a Glock, something in our brain changes. Talking to you right now – it's changing my brain waves. I have no idea how or what it means now – or what it might mean later – but it's still going on. There's no outside power involved. No faith. No belief. No Father, Son, or Holy Ghost. It just goes on and on, whatever's going on up there, and nothing else is required."

Sonny's footsteps on the stairs broke him out of his trance, and Elizabeth took a step back and leaned against the desk chair. _"That _is what people like us believe in."

"Mister Corinthos Sir! Mister Corinthos Sir!" Spinelli could be heard yelling in the hallway and when he threw open the door, he didn't figure on Elizabeth standing so close to it that it hit her in the shoulder. "Oh-"

"Watch what you're doing, Spinelli," Jason growled, pulling Elizabeth away from the door as she rubbed her arm.

"The Jackal is exceedingly sorry, O Vivacious One," the boy said, setting his computer down so that he could inspect Elizabeth. "Where did I clip you?"

"I'm fine," Elizabeth replied, brushing his hands away. "Just be more careful next time because if you do it again, I _will _break you."

And with that, she flounced away to the main room leaving Jason to wonder just what had happened. Spinelli, however, was perfectly satisfied that his fearsome Dragon was unharmed and grabbed his computer just as Sonny came down.

"What's going on?" he asked, noticing the strange look on Jason's face. "Elizabeth? What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything!" she burst out. "Why do you always blame me? I got my shoulder smashed in by the little nerd and you _still _look at me like I'm the bad guy here! God forbid that you ever suspect your Messianic best friend of-"

"Okay, okay, got it, sorry," Sonny apologized, affectionately running a hand over her hair. "Oh, I almost forgot – didn't you say you had something to show me after I came home?"

Elizabeth nodded and quickly retrieved her computer from the table. Spinelli, not sensing that his own project was in any danger, magnanimously kept quiet and decided to wait his turn. "Yeah, it's nothing big, just something I whipped up that I thought might help you out."

Sonny tilted his head at the computer screen as the brunette called up the application. "Oh?"

"Mm-hmm," she nodded, barely noticing as a suspicious Jason drew closer and peered at the screen as well. "The database that Benny and Bernie use now is totally antiquated. I know they keep telling you that it's fine and they're used to it and it would take them weeks to learn how to use anything new that I make, but that's not true. I put this together and I promise it's really user-friendly."

"What is it?" Sonny wanted to know as Spinelli opened his mouth to protest.

"It's a new database to catalog all present workers," Elizabeth explained before her rival had a chance to speak. "I already filled in all our existing information on them – all contact information, progress reports, demerits if any, background info. Everything. And I made it so that whoever is using it – you, Benny, Bernie – can add to it. Like, say that…oh, I don't know…Francis and Ritchie get into it and you can't put them on the same shift because they'll just end up whaling on each other."

Sonny frowned as Spinelli paled. "But Francis would never get into it with anyone. He's the nicest guard we have."

Elizabeth's eyes glittered and she shrugged innocently. "For sake of argument. Now, see, you can add a note here – and in this line of the field, put their names – and say that they are not to work together."

"Well, yeah, but I can put that on a Post-It. Or remember it."

She rolled her dark eyes and swatted his knee. "Oh, ye of little faith, get a look at this. Say you're making new schedules and you want to put them together. Oop! Look! See? It won't let you do it. And it'll tell you why, and give you other suggestions based on other notes you made – see, over here, I had already added that Francis worked best with the younger guards because he used the detail shifts to train them, so it automatically pulled up a list of the 'younger' guard. The field 'younger' was demarcated based on the allocation of x as an integer falling between 21 and 26. What do you think?"

"This is brilliant, sweetheart, thank you," Sonny grinned, using her mouse to fiddle with the application as Jason and Spinelli fumed in the background. "Would you look at that? Did you see, Jason?"

"I saw," came the tight reply.

"Amazing," Sonny repeated, running a finger across the top of the screen. "Thank you, sweetheart. You'll have a copy of this run over to Benny and Bernie?"

She nodded brightly. "Already done. Stan and I will pop on over tomorrow morning and teach them how to use it. I'm glad you like it. I'm actually working on a patch for it that will connect to the payroll system – you can handle all of that stuff using only one application then."

Sonny turned to Jason, beaming. "Have I got the greatest kid or what?"

Elizabeth watched, amused, as Jason grunted in reply. "Oh, please, that's too much – really, Jason, you're _embarrassing _me."

She had no idea how she held her laughter upon the monster glare she received for that remark.

"So, Spinelli, what was that gift you said you had for me?" Sonny asked absently, still fiddling with the new program like a boy on Christmas morning.

"Nothing that can compete with what the Vivacious One has gifted you with, Mister Corinthos Sir," Spinelli replied politely, his voice oddly clipped as he hugged his computer to his chest. "If you will excuse the Jackal…"

Jason grunted something in reply and followed his charge out, but when he reached the door, he paused and gave Elizabeth a long look. It wasn't disapproving or suspicious…but Elizabeth still felt like it seared her insides and left them bare to his gaze. And just like that, Jason took another step and disappeared into the hall. Sonny had noticed the moment and looked up at her curiously, but Elizabeth waved his concern away.

So her former guardian went back to work playing with his new program, and Elizabeth sank down onto the armrest of his favorite armchair, wondering why, all of a sudden, she felt so damn crummy.


	7. Chapter 7

**Hack 07**

Jason wouldn't stand for this.

Spinelli hadn't said a word as they retreated back to their penthouse after Elizabeth's little presentation, and when he let them both in, the boy immediately scurried up the stairs to the safe haven of his bedroom where he promptly began to play…the Cure.

Now, Jason could have handled it if he was playing Underoath – that would have meant that Spinelli was angry. He could have handled it if he started playing Eliot Smith – that would have meant that Spinelli was getting himself to rise above the trouncing and was already plotting his next move. He could even have handled it if he was playing the Joy Division, a band that annoyed Jason to no end – that would have meant that Spinelli was just trying to tune everything else out for a little while, and there was nothing wrong with that.

But he was playing the _Cure_.

And really, that was the only thing sadder than the fact that Jason knew the individual names of the bands that his young friend listened to.

Shit.

Damien Spinelli was crushed, and Jason just wouldn't stand for it.

"Milo." Jason pinched the bridge of his nose and waited a beat for the noise on the guard's end to die down. "Call Stan and tell him to get someone up here to sweep my penthouse. Yeah. Okay."

He hung up the phone, satisfied that this would be the end of it. Elizabeth would soon know that messing with Spinelli this way just wasn't an option.

* * *

"What do you mean, you didn't find anything?" Jason snapped, glaring darkly at Stan and Trevor. "There's a fucking bug in this penthouse! Look again!"

Elizabeth, who had Sonny's door cracked open just enough to hear what was going on at Jason's, giggled. From where she was standing, she could glimpse part of Jason's face and the right side of his body, and the enforcer's expressions and rigid stance made it clear that he was pissed. Naturally, this gave her no small measure of satisfaction.

"Jason, I scanned the whole penthouse," Stan tried to explain. "You saw me – I've been here for a little more than an hour doing a very careful, very thorough job. You're at the top of this organization, and naturally, I take any suspicion of a tap on your part very seriously. But I'm telling you, we didn't find anything."

"Then look again," Jason ground out, pronouncing each word carefully and slowly for the young man's benefit. "Because there is a bug here."

"Can I ask again what makes you so sure?" Stan inquired politely. This was his boss, after all, and it would do him absolutely no good to get snippy, no matter how insulted he felt by Jason's ranting.

"Dude, Stone Cold, what's going on?"

Elizabeth rose on her toes and craned her neck and made out Spinelli's beanie. The nerd had apparently just come down the stairs to see what all the commotion was about.

"NightNinja, I thought you had already left," he continued, bowing at Stan. Ever since he had learned of his online alias, Spinelli was very admiring of Stan which irked Elizabeth to no end because her cyber record was _much _more impressive than Stanford's, but it was only because she was a girl that Spinelli barely batted a lash.

"Not quite, Spinelli." Stan shook his head, trying not to sound anything but perfectly pleasant. "We did a sweep of the place and didn't find anything, but Jason says there's definitely a tap here somewhere. I was just asking what made him so certain."

"Oh, I can tell you that easy, O Technocratic One," Spinelli offered as Jason glowered in the background. "We were just over at Mister Corinthos Sir's not-so-humble abode where I planned to show him the Jackal's newest revolution in employer-employee interfacing."

"Right, right." Stan nodded as if this were perfectly intelligible. "Go on."

"As it turned out, the fire-breathing Dragon also had a gift of her own making for Mister Corinthos Sir – and it was the same exact thing that I had made."

"You mean it was _better_," Elizabeth muttered from her safe position across the hall.

"That doesn't sound so strange," Stan frowned. "Was this an assignment that you guys worked together on?"

Spinelli was shaking his head. "No, no, you misunderstand, O Technocratic One. It was a secret project on my part to impress Mister Corinthos Sir. And the Dragon had the _same exact thing_ already finished when I went over there to show him!"

"I don't really get why you're so surprised," Stan admitted slowly, making Elizabeth smile. She knew there was a reason that he was her best friend. "Elizabeth's really good at this stuff – I mean, _really _good. Like, scary good. Just because she had the same kind of program made as you did doesn't necessarily mean that she was somehow spying on you-"

"Just look again," Jason interrupted tersely.

"Jason, I know you're concerned about this, but-"

"Tell you what," the enforcer interrupted again, crossing his arms over his chest and leaving absolutely no room for any sort of challenge. "Better send someone else up to do a sweep. We'll be waiting."

Stan pursed his lips into a smile and nodded. "Sure thing, Jason. I'll send someone right up. Have a good day."

Jason waited until the two men were out in the hall before shutting the door behind them, and it was only then that Stan rolled his eyes as he and Trevor hauled the equipment over to the elevator.

"Ass."

Elizabeth hopped up and down happily, watching as Trevor cast an apprehensive glance at Jason's door. "Better not say it so close to his place, Stan. He could hear."

"Let him," the young man sighed, jabbing at the button. "Can you believe that? I've been working with this organization since he left for Cuba or wherever-the-fuck he went – I'm the authority on taps and bugs and cameras. And did you hear him? Telling me that I wasn't good enough to do what I've been doing all this time? You know, I'm almost sorry now that I told Elizabeth she was probably reading too much into whatever Jason said to her. She told me that he was an ass and I told her to give him a chance because there was no way he could be such a bad guy. Damn."

"Yeah, Default Corinthos got it right this time," Trevor agreed as the elevator doors opened slowly. "So what are you gonna do?"

"What _can _I do?" Stan grunted as he and the guard hauled the equipment into the elevator. "He's my boss's partner – for that alone, he requires my respect. I'm not going to do anything. I'm going to treat him with the same respect and courtesy that I have since he came home, but if he's looking for a friend or ally, he can just forget about it."

The elevator doors dinged and slid closed, and it was only then that Elizabeth closed her own door and leaned against it, a broad smile on her face.

Most excellent.

* * *

Sonny looked up when he thought he heard yelling from the hall. "What was that?"

"I dunno," Elizabeth shrugged, not even bothering to look up from her book. She was currently sprawled on her back on one of the olive green armchairs, her head on one armrest and her legs thrown over the other with a copy of _Liquidation _balanced on her tummy. "Didn't catch it."

"It sounded like Jason was saying, 'what do you mean you didn't find anything?'" Sonny insisted. "What do you think he meant?"

"I make it a point never to ask myself what Jason thinks," she replied, still completely unconcerned. She remained that way until the door to the penthouse was practically kicked down to reveal a fuming Jason whose piercing eyes immediately zoomed in on the brunette.

"Jason," Sonny frowned, putting down his paper. "What's wrong?"

"You," he growled, stalking over to where Elizabeth was wiggling her toes over the armrest. "What did you do?"

The brunette frowned and straightened, swinging her legs down to the floor and straightening her shirt. "What are you talking about?"

"I know you bugged the penthouse," Jason told her, bracing his hands on the armrests and leering menacingly down at her. "Tell me where."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Elizabeth replied firmly, though she was unable to back up the confidence of that statement with any physical gesture. As it was, Jason was towering over her, giving her no choice but to burrow back into the cushion. "What bug?"

"You know what bug!"

Sonny wasn't entirely sure where this was going, but he didn't like it. "Jason, I don't think-"

"I know you put it somewhere in the main room," he informed her, ignoring Sonny altogether. "I just had Stan sweep the whole place-"

"And did you find anything?" Elizabeth asked, her eyebrows rising in a perfectly orchestrated practiced gesture of curiosity and innocence.

Jason's lips tightened into a thin red line. "No, but-"

"Then _obviously _there's no bug there," the brunette drawled, moving her fingers as if she were drawing a diagram for him in the air. "And if there's no bug there, then _obviously _I couldn't have planted said non-existent bug."

The enforcer looked as if he wanted to throttle her, and would have, too, if Sonny hadn't been there. "You did it. I know it, you know it."

"What on earth makes you think I would have bugged your penthouse?" Elizabeth demanded, though really, it was more like a squeak as Jason's intimidating presence forced her to dig her toes into the cushion and seek to burrow back even further. "When would I have done it? _Where _would I have done it so that even Stan couldn't find it? And _why _would I have done it?"

"So you could use it to keep an eye on the competition." Jason's cerulean eyes sparkled with ferocity, all of it directed at a young woman that probably weighed as much as one of his legs. "You used it to find out what Spinelli was working on to impress Sonny and you made sure you made the same thing."

"Only better," Elizabeth informed him. "And no, I didn't."

"Then how do you explain that you had the same thing as he did?"

"I had a _better _thing than he did because I'm smarter and better suited for this job," she snipped. "I know our needs and I can anticipate changes that need to be made. I've been working with this organization for five years before you and your little lapdog came sniffing around, and would you look at that, our records are in order, two sets of books are carefully electronically maintained, and Sonny's not in jail. Pretty amazing for a _girl_, huh?"

"Don't change the subject," Jason barked, staring her dead in the eyes. "You know what you did."

"Obviously not," she fired back. "But you have a pretty good idea, don't you? Go ahead, Jason, tell us what else Spinelli came crying to you about. Is it my fault that the other kids don't play nice with him? Did I put them up to it? Am I to blame for the fact that he didn't get that Tonka Truck he wanted for Christmas?"

"Wherever you put it, I'll find it," Jason promised, his voice low and tight. "I don't care if Stan has to _live _in the penthouse; that bug will be taken out. And you won't _ever _do something like that again."

Elizabeth smacked her palms on the armrest, taking Jason by surprise with her outrage. "Hey, I don't care if you _do _get off on threatening girls, you putz, but don't get all pissy with me just because I know how to my job damn well. Maybe instead of coming barging in here, whipping it around and making accusations, your time would be better spent schooling your darling little protégé in how to play with the big girls. Because if the little twerp goes running straight for your skirts over something like this? He can use all the help he can get."

"At least he's playing fair."

"You're a mobster!" she burst out, her sapphire eyes narrowing lethally, just like she'd learned from her own mentor. "You don't get to rest on the security afforded by actually having morals!"

Dear God, he was actually regressing to her level of crazy. "Just tell me where you put it!"

"Just go straight to Hell!"

And there they were, her still sitting with her toes dug into the couch cushion, him glowering over her with his hands on the rest. A total stalemate – battle of wills – whatever you wanted to call it, it was clear to Sonny that neither one of them was going to budge and that they wouldn't get anywhere like this. And then he saw Jason's gaze betray him and drop to Elizabeth's mouth, and Sonny knew he had to break this up.

"Jason, I think you should leave," he instructed, moving over to the armchair to gently tug his friend back.

"Sonny, she-"

"I don't want to hear it," he interrupted, steering the enforcer to the door. "You come in here wildly accusing her, and she was good enough to tell you point-blank that she didn't do it. And that's that. Go home, tell Spinelli that I'll be expecting better behavior when it's time for the next challenge, and I'll see you guys for breakfast. Goodnight."

Elizabeth peered over the back of the armchair as Sonny shut the door in his very disagreeable best friend's face. Sonny stared at the door and shook his head, running a hand wearily through his curls. He'd catch Hell for that later – for the blatant favoritism he was showing Elizabeth – but honestly, he just didn't care. Jason coddled his kid; why didn't he get to coddle his sometimes?

"Wow," the brunette breathed, coming up behind him. "Thanks. You actually got him to leave. That's gotta be a record of some sort."

Sonny didn't dignify her comment and instead turned and stared the brunette hard in the face. Elizabeth stared back at him, her expression perfectly serious, but as the seconds ticked by, Sonny's tried-and-true method of figuring out whether his girl was lying to him won out. While his expression remained unchanging, Elizabeth slowly broke out into a giant grin, unable to hide her cheekiness.

The sight of the triumphant smile was enough to crack even Sonny, and the mobster laughed as he waved her off and headed toward the stairs. "I don't even want to know – that way, when Jason asks, I won't have to lie."

Elizabeth's giggles followed him all the way up the stairs and even though the whole thing amused him terribly, Sonny couldn't help but wonder if the rivalry was slowly spreading from the kids to him and Jason.

* * *

_A day or two later…_

"She definitely has a bug here," Spinelli murmured around the rim of his bottle of orange soda. "How else would she have immediately known that I made off with her monkey butt lamp and made me give it back? Tricksy Dragon."

"Stop saying that."

"Lord of the Rings, Stone Cold," he tried to explain. "Tricksy hobbitses – that's what Gollum, formerly known as Smeagol, says of Frodo and Samwise Gemji when he is leading them to Mount Mordor to dispose of the One Ring gifted to Frodo by his uncle Bilbo Baggins, who recorded the tales of his own adventures in yet another masterpiece of literary fiction known as-"

"How many times have I told you? I don't care about your cartoons."

This statement mortally wounded the boy. "They're not _cartoons_, Stone Cold. Lord of the Rings, a grand trilogy adventure penned by the ever-wise J. Double R. Tolkien, was converted to the big screen by the equally-wise Peter Jackson, who used-"

"Spinelli."

The boy burrowed down into the couch. "Fine."

Jason let out a sigh of relief and lined up his next shot.

"Notacartoon."

"Spinelli!"

_"Fine_."

A long pause ensued in which Jason sunk two stripes.

"Stone Cold?"

He slammed the butt of his cue on the floor. "What?"

Spinelli's green eyes peered apprehensively at him from over the back of the couch. "I don't feel safe here anymore."

Oh, for God's sake.

Jason dumped the cue on the table and walked over to the closet. "I'm going for a ride."

Spinelli nearly fell off the couch. "What? You're just going to leave me here with the Dragon's surveillance?"

"Yeah."

"But you can't! She pervades this penthouse! She has minions everywhere – how much do you _really _trust the NightNinja? Her eyes see all, just like the evil Eye of Sauron, and-"

Jason pulled open the front door and stepped out into the hall. "Bye, Spinelli. Have fun with your cartoons."

"NOT A CARTOON!"

Jason let the door slam shut behind him and headed toward the elevators when he saw Elizabeth poke her head out of Sonny's open penthouse.

"Hey," she called, waving at him with one hand while she nibbled on a frozen banana. "Tell Spinelli that they're actually in talks to turn L-O-T-R into an animated thing."

The door to Penthouse II flew open to reveal a stunned Spinelli, who was more flabbergasted by the news than the blatant evidence that Elizabeth had just been watching them. "What? Did I hear that right? No way!"

Elizabeth nodded, not noticing that a couple nuts fell off her banana and onto the floor. "Oh, yeah, it's totally in the works. Steve Jobs wants to turn it into a Pixar venture."

Spinelli pulled a face. "Hobbits, elves, dwarves, wizards, Orks, Uruk-hai, Ents, and men as clay-mation figures? Shoot me when that happens."

"I know!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "And he's not the only one vying for it, either. How much would it suck if Disney got the rights? We'd have, like, the Ent Song, just a poorly rehashed version of the Elephant March from the Jungle Book set to the same music."

"And you'd have to immediately kiss any original Biblical or philosophical content goodbye," Spinelli pointed out.

Elizabeth nodded emphatically. "God, I'd just want to kill myself."

If the elevator doors hadn't opened just then, and if the desire to leave hadn't been so incredibly tempting and necessary, Jason would have throttled both Elizabeth and his own young charge on the spot.

_A/N: There is no talk of turning LOTR into an animated venture. So please, slowly, come down off the ledge._


	8. Chapter 8

**Hack 08**

"But, Boss, I don't get why you want to put _us _in the middle of this."

"Yeah," Bernie agreed with his twin. "It seems like…like you're just trying to pawn this off on us."

"I gotta go with my boys on this," Stan nodded.

Sonny assumed his most regally threatening pose, that of the outwardly concerned and wistful employer appearing to listen to the complaints of his workers while cowing them to his will. "It does? You boys think I'm trying to _pawn _this off on you?"

"Well, maybe pawn is too strong a word," Benny started uneasily. "But maybe 'delegate' works in this case-"

"Pawn, delegate, we can table both," Sonny interrupted magnanimously as he paced back and forth in front of the men. "So you think that since this challenge was technically my idea – mine and Jason's – and that since I already gave the first prompt, I should continue to do so."

"Yes?" Stan guessed hopefully.

Sonny tapped his finger on his chin. "That makes sense. Especially since I am the head of this organization, not to mention the chief executive of a major coffee importer and wholesale facility, and since I have a thousand men in my direct employ that I have to manage and supervise. And also because I have to maintain relations with other powerful men in my position, and am oftentimes called unexpectedly out of town for days on end. I don't see any problem in having to add this little game on top of all that, and neither do you guys. Is that right?"

Benny and Bernie had seen the error of their ways and, as they always did when they were reluctantly giving in to one of Sonny's orders, spoke in unison. "We'd be happy to do it, Sir."

"Ditto," Stan murmured, managing a respectful tip of his head. "Whatever you say, Sir."

Sonny grinned, his dimples peeking out and nodded. "Excellent. Thanks, guys. I'll remember this."

And with that, he sauntered out of the office and over to the elevator, ready to head home for the day. Let Elizabeth and Spinelli take their little squabbles up to the court of Benny, Bernie and Stan; this way, there was no way he could be accused of favoritism in giving the challenges, and there would be no wedge driven between him and Jason.

* * *

"I'mdoneI'mdoneI'mdoneHERE!"

Sonny nearly spilled scalding hot coffee on Jason's hand while filling up his best friend's mug as Elizabeth came barreling down the steps with her finished assignment.

"Not it!" she shouted, tossing the folder onto Sonny's empty plate and holding her hands up in the air. At Sonny and Jason's confused looks, she sheepishly put them down. "Sorry – I was thinking Tag. I got confused."

Sonny picked up the file and hefted it. "Finished already?"

Elizabeth nodded and moved around the table to stand by her seat. "Yup. Sorry, Jason, looks like your darling little protégé didn't make it in under the wire this time."

He glowered at her and waited for Sonny to pour his coffee, unable to believe that just yesterday, he'd been so fired up over the girl – by the girl, _by the girl_, damn it – that he'd actually contemplated her mouth. He hadn't thought about kissing it or shutting it – he'd just stood there like a jackass and contemplated her mouth: the shape, the softness, the fullness. Like a fucking idiot. Well, there'd be absolutely no more of that.

So he rolled his eyes, grunted, and rattled his coffee mug to get Sonny's attention.

Elizabeth shook her head. "Charmed, I'm sure."

"Takeittakeittakeit!"

This time, Jason nearly spilled coffee on his own lap because just as he lifted the mug to his lips, Spinelli burst into the penthouse with a giant folder of his own. His shoulders drooped when he saw Elizabeth standing triumphantly next to Sonny, and the boy handed his in more modestly in the face of this grave disappointment.

"Here you go, Mister Corinthos Sir," he mumbled, refusing to meet Jason's eyes as he turned it in and slumped down in his seat. Across the table, Elizabeth took up her place at Sonny's right hand and made a triumphant show of unfolding her cloth napkin and laying it down on her gray-and-pink pinstriped slacks.

"Thanks, kids," Sonny smiled, stacking the assignments together. "Help yourself to the French toast – I left the powdered sugar in the kitchen – and I'll just look these over."

Jason glared at Elizabeth when she once again began snapping her fingers at him to pass the syrup, but did as he was bid to anyway. Ever since the incident by the elevators the other day, and the explosive argument in Sonny's penthouse, he'd been ignoring the girl. But today was a new day, and he couldn't help but voice a sentiment that had been bugging him for a while.

"I thought you were going to move out."

The brunette didn't look up from her task of cutting her toast into neat little squares. On the other side of the table, Spinelli was just ripping into his. "Sonny wanted to replace the range and the oven and the fridge, and it's taking longer than was expected to get the appliances in."

That was it; nothing more. No barbs, no quips, nothing snippy or snarky.

She was definitely up to something.

"You cook?"

A strange look flickered in her downcast sapphire eyes until she realized he was asking in reference to the new stove and oven. "I do all right for myself. Don't really like to, though, but I'll do it if I have to – or if it's for someone special. But it has to be someone _very _special."

Across the room, Sonny smiled to himself as he leafed through the pages, thinking of his most recent birthday when Elizabeth had prepared a small feast of tapas and paellas in his kitchen as a surprise. Jason, however, was unaware of their father-daughter cooking customs and was thinking that Elizabeth meant someone as a romantic interest.

Maybe it was Nikolas.

That thought irked him to no end, so he quickly moved past it.

"How long's it supposed to take?"

"A week or two more, I guess," she shrugged. "Twelve business days."

Yup, still no smart-ass remarks or double-entendres. She was definitely up to something.

"What's being replaced again?"

"The range, the oven, and the fridge."

"Anything else after that?"

"I was hearing something about wallpaper, but I don't know. Maybe."

"Where'd you put the bug?"

Her bright eyes met his and Elizabeth graced him with a crooked smile. "Nice try, but no."

Jason cursed lightly under his breath and returned to his coffee and the morning paper. Damn stupid woman. He'd find that thing one of these days – and then he and Spinelli would repay her in full.

Spinelli, however, wasn't about to let it go so easily. "You know, Dragon, it's not right to use your forces of darkness to spy on me and Stone Cold. You're violating our First Amendment rights…or some rights. I can never keep straight what your country stands for. Anyway - You're violating our rights! What makes you think that you can blatantly spy on us – without even trying to _hide _it – without any repercussions or legal action of any kind?"

"Patriot Act," Elizabeth replied blandly. "This is America - Get used to it, nerd."

"Mister Corinthos Sir!"

"I don't know anything," Sonny called back disinterestedly. "I don't know anything about a bug."

Elizabeth smirked wickedly at both Jason and Sonny while the two men glared at Sonny, who was still perusing the files he'd been given. "Oh, say can you see..."

"I'll get you back, Dragon. Me and Stone Cold both."

"I'm shaking in my thigh-highs," she drawled, biting down on her fork to keep from blatantly laughing at him.

Spinelli frowned and resumed eating his breakfast as Jason read the paper and tried to ignore the fact that they were both in the same room as him. This went on for a good fifteen minutes until Sonny had reached his verdict regarding the challenge.

Elizabeth and Spinelli both looked up eagerly as he approached the table. "Well?"

"Who won?"

Jason, naturally, was very interested in the ruling as well.

"Both assignments were very well done, very careful, very thorough-"

"Come on, Mister Corinthos Sir, the people want a name!"

"Elizabeth."

"Yes!" The brunette clapped her hands and grinned at Jason and Spinelli. "Oh, I'm so ill-prepared – I just had no idea! I really didn't expect this. First, I'd like to thank Mister Perkins. I couldn't have done it without him. Also, Jesus. Even though I have some doubts as to his divinity, I feel his presence in this room right now."

Sonny rolled his eyes and sat down at the table, meeting Jason's dark glare head on. "What?"

Jason said nothing, but his eyes narrowed further into dark slits, causing Sonny to slam his fork down onto the plate, a serious breach of his carefully cultivated table manners.

"What?" he repeated, more impatient this time. "The printouts were both exactly the same, down to the last comma. Every single thing, identical. They both did the same job. But Elizabeth handed hers in first. She won."

Jason muttered something obscene under his breath and glowered at the coffee as Elizabeth waved to an imaginary cheering crowd of adulators.

Fuck.

* * *

"Can you at least tell me how I did yet?"

Sonny glanced up at Spinelli, annoyed by his hovering. "No. I don't have Elizabeth's yet; it wouldn't be fair."

The boy collapsed on the couch next to his mentor. "But it's been thirteen minutes! Please, Mister Corinthos Sir?"

"No."

"Stone Cold-"

Jason waved off Spinelli's pleading look. "Just be patient," he told him, his lips twitching. "She already lost, anyway."

This assessment reassured the boy, and he settled down next to his friend. Barely a minute had ticked by – that was fourteen, in case anyone was counting as Spinelli and Jason both were – before Elizabeth came barreling down the stairs with a sheet of paper.

"I'm…done." She frowned sourly when she saw that Spinelli had already turned his in, and handed the sheet over to Sonny.

The boy couldn't resist the urge to gloat. "Like I said, Dragon, slow and steady does _not _win the race."

Elizabeth muttered something unfavorable and flopped down on the couch next to him as she awaited the verdict. It wouldn't take Sonny too long to scan the assignment and decide; the printouts were each only a page long, double-spaced, printed on both sides.

It was just a simple coding task, and she could kick herself for spending fourteen extra minutes on it. Coding was her forte, or one of them at any rate, but only because she usually wasn't racing to finish. Sure, she was sometimes racing against a clock, but that was much easier than racing against Spinelli. The little nerd must have been able to code in his sleep if he could get it done so fast.

She wouldn't have even had to take those extra fourteen minutes if she hadn't accidentally programmed herself into an infinite loop. She had no idea what it was, but every time she sat down to code something, which was often, she almost always created and then had to dismantle an infinite loop, which was difficult. The program would chug and chug and chug itself in circles while she'd pore over the code, frantically trying to find the incorrect syntax. She'd always find it, correct it, and be well on her way…except this time. Damn those fourteen minutes.

"Well? Who won?"

Sonny looked back at the three expectant people taking up his couch. "Spinelli."

The boy pumped his fists in the air. "Awesome! Time for a victory lap!" He immediately stood and, inserting his mp3 player's earbuds into his ears, began jogging in slow-motion around the couch.

"You can't hear it, but I've got the theme to _Rocky _playing," he explained to the rest of the bewildered onlookers. Jason scrubbed a hand over his face and shook his head, but there was no mistaking how pleased he was that his charge had won.

"Whatever, I'm still ahead," Elizabeth sighed, unable to mask the glumness in her voice. Damn fourteen minutes. Damn infinite loops.

* * *

"I'm done with it," Elizabeth announced, waltzing down the steps with Mister Perkins in hand. Jason was seated at the breakfast table and scowled when he saw her. But the brunette ignored him entirely and waited for Sonny to come around and take a seat in his favorite armchair.

"Take a look. By the way, have you taken a look at that new email account of yours?"

Sonny took the computer from her and frowned slightly. Elizabeth had recently created a new untraceable email address for herself after becoming fed up with her old covert address, and now she was after him to finally get into the swing of using email to communicate. "I, uh, saw the instructions you left for me but, no, I haven't checked it yet. Sweetheart, you know how I feel about email; I just don't – Oh."

He stared at the screen and then up at her. "Your program is pink."

Elizabeth shrugged. "What's wrong with pink?"

Sonny opened his mouth to reply, found that he had absolutely nothing, and shut it again. He clicked around, using the buttons she'd coded into her GUI, and seemed to be enjoying himself. "Hey, this is all right. So easy to use."

"I can change the color later if you want," she joked, resting her chin on his shoulder as Jason watched pensively from across the room. "I'm thinking black…or olive green…or navy."

"If it's not too much trouble…" Sonny looked over at her, sheepish. "I can't be seen using a pink application. Remember what happened that time you put those pink eraser heads on all my pencils?"

Elizabeth nodded sagely. "Who knew that your mob friends would have such an issue with the color? And the fact that you used eraser heads in general?"

Sonny shook his head and continued playing with the program. He had mentioned his wish for something of the kind to Bernie one day, and the accountant and his brother had whipped it up into one of the challenge prompts with a little help from Stan's vast store of technical knowledge. And now he had exactly what he needed.

They all looked up when there was a knock on the door, and Spinelli soon let himself in. The boy looked absolutely terrible. He was still wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day before, his hair was uncombed and unkempt, and he had circles under his eyes. Instead of holding his program, he held only a few sheets of paper in his hand.

"This is all I got," he got out, looking out wearily at the gang from bleary and bloodshot eyes. "I have some of the codes done – I know how to get it to do what you want it to do, and without wasting any steps, either – but I didn't come up with any way to put it together. I just…can't deal with it now. Take it if you want it – I really don't care right now. Where's the coffee?"

Elizabeth took the pages from him while Jason got up and poured the kid a cup of Sonny's special brew. Normally, he'd be a little upset with Spinelli for just handing this one over to their rival, but he just didn't have it in him given the boy's pitiful appearance. Maybe the kid needed a break.

"Let me pull up the source code here," Sonny offered, taking the pages and opening up the source. "What?" he bristled when he saw Jason's surprised look. "I know things."

"No, you don't," Elizabeth corrected, studying Spinelli's codes. "It's mostly the same as mine, isn't it?"

"What did he do here?" Sonny asked, using his finger to circle a chunk of code that differed from hers. "What's that do?"

"Let me see that," she muttered, taking it from his hand. Puzzled, the brunette sat down on the armrest and looked back and forth between the pages she held and her computer screen. At the table, Spinelli was trying to stay awake long enough to drink his coffee.

"Jeez, look at that." Elizabeth used her finger to trace the same area of her own code.

"What?" Sonny tried to figure out what she was seeing, but as usual, he couldn't make heads or tails of it. "What is it?"

"He streamlined the whole code paragraph," she explained, pointing it out on the screen. "See? I wrote two chunks to get it done, and Spinelli distilled it down to three lines. Shoot, how did I miss that? I spent extra time on it for no reason – and added about thirty seconds to total run time. Hrm…"

The coffee had managed to boost Spinelli's basic functioning levels from those of a rock to those of a mud puddle, and he turned around to face Sonny and Elizabeth. "Which part are you talking about? What did I do?"

"Here," Elizabeth pointed out on his printout. "You used a stack."

Spinelli, who couldn't see anything from the other side of the room, begrudgingly got up out of his seat and staggered over to see what the big deal was.

"Oh, I get it," he murmured, scanning the lines she was pointing to. "I used a stack. You used a graph."

"It's a non-linear data structure case," she pointed out. "I didn't want to use a tree because I didn't need a primary entry point – no root node. And paths and hierarchies wouldn't work well enough."

"Yeah, but if you just rewrite the base line, you can actually convert it into a linear structure, use the stack like I did, call in the simple int function instead of the complicated stuff you're doing, and that's it. As long as you remember to convert back out when it's done with that loop, you're fine."

Sonny, who by this point had decided that Elizabeth was right and that he did not, in fact, know things, got up from his seat. Together, he and Jason returned to the breakfast table and the morning's paper.

"Explain that again."

Spinelli sat down on the couch next to her and took the sheet from her hand. "Okay, see what I did here? I just rewrote the base line this way, so that instead of a non-linear data structure, it becomes linear. I just made a note in the margins here that I had taken this component out and would need to compensate for it later."

"Like completing the square," Elizabeth offered.

"Exactly. Then, I just organized it into a linear stack, called up the integer function, and ran that code. It took only a couple lines, even though I smooshed the notation together. Yours is actually set up like it should be – with each part on a different line. I never got into the habit of doing that; mine's always roped along together."

"…And then you just brought in the neglected component, converted back out from the stack structure and finished out," Elizabeth murmured. "Okay, I think I got that."

"How did you compile it all together?" Spinelli wanted to know. "I mean, I had the code chunks, but I spent four hours trying to get the first two to work together, and I'm still pretty sure it's wrong."

"Whenever I need to put things together, I just make a GUI," Elizabeth explained.

"Isn't that a ton of extra work?"

"Not really, because you've already got the code part worked out. Then you just need to call up the Java libraries and make the interface, and that's not hard at all. It's just the basic commands for colors and text and prompts and buttons. When the GUI's up, everything just falls into sequence and you can manage it a whole lot better. It doesn't take nearly as long as you think. Here, I'll give you a site that gives a great run-through of the benefits of using GUIs to frame the whole coded application."

"Okay, sounds good." Spinelli patted his pockets down for a pen before finally finding one lodged under his beanie. "Here. And I'll email you a zipped file with some more conversion examples. I don't use graphs a lot, because they're not my favorite, but I have tons of trees. You got an untraceable address?"

"Sure," Elizabeth chuckled. "Who doesn't? I even made one for Sonny, but he's stuck in the Stone Age."

"Stone Cold is equally resistant to change," Spinelli confided, braving a glance at his mentor. "He hasn't even looked at the one I set up for him. And it's such a primo set up, too – 5 gigs of space, encrypted protocols, and a dancing bear on the upper right hand corner of the home page. What more could you ask for?"

At the table, Sonny shook his head and gave Jason a wry look. "Nerds."


	9. Chapter 9

**Hack 09**

"So why are we going over to Mister Corinthos Sir's?"

Jason pursed his lips together as he led Spinelli out of their penthouse. "Because there's no food at our place."

"Gee, I wonder whose fault _that _is," the boy mumbled under his breath.

"What?"

"Nothing, Stone Cold."

Jason let himself into Sonny's penthouse and was mildly surprised to see that no one was in the main room. Usually, either Sonny would be there reading his paper or Elizabeth would be there with one of her books. Music filtered in from the kitchen, so that was where Jason headed next, with Spinelli loyally in tow.

"You want me to cut up more bell peppers?" they heard Elizabeth ask, and when the two men entered the kitchen – the Promised Land, as the guards, who were never allowed there, called it – they saw Sonny and Elizabeth wearing matching aprons and engaged in some sort of…cooking…endeavor.

"Please," Sonny answered, adding roughly three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil to a warm skillet. "And get the cumin out for me, if you can."

He turned around to see which bell peppers Elizabeth had selected and noticed Jason and Spinelli standing in the entranceway and staring at the two of them as if they'd lost their minds. "Jason, Spinelli – you're early."

The enforcer frowned at Elizabeth, who waved hurriedly in greeting and then went about selecting a knife. "You said to come over for dinner."

"And we didn't have any food," Spinelli piped up, trying to pick a slippery piece of mango up from a plate. "Not that I'm pointing any fingers of blame, you understand, but – Ow!"

Elizabeth had just slapped his hand and now wagged her knife-wielding hand at him. "Don't pick it out of the bowl – if you want a piece, get a plate and a fork. God knows where those hands have been? We're trying to keep things sanitary here."

Spinelli frowned at her as he accepted the napkin and spare butter knife Jason handed him and set about trying to finagle a few pieces onto his 'plate.' He definitely didn't trust the Dragon handling that knife, and in such close proximity, no less. "What are you two doing?"

"What's it look like?" she asked, returning to the cutting board where two large green peppers awaited her. "We're cooking."

This interested Jason, but his tone remained skeptical. "You cook?"

"I told you, I do alright for myself," Elizabeth shrugged. "And I also told you that I only cook when it's for – or with – someone special."

Sonny grinned at that as he began transferring the chopped vegetables into his skillet. "Cooking's our thing," he explained. "We used to get together about one night every two weeks and cook a little something for ourselves – make a night of it. And now that Elizabeth's staying with me, it's much easier to have a spontaneous Cooking Night."

"Original title," Spinelli murmured around his mango. The last time he'd had the luxury of eating one was when he and Jason were running around in Spain. Those people put mangoes in everything! It was wonderful, and definitely a rule he'd instate if he ever came to be in charge of that sort of thing.

Sonny spared him a bland look but didn't address him further. "We weren't doing anything tonight, and we had a feeling you two weren't, either, so we decided to whip up quesadillas and a fresh garden salad. You guys like tortillas?"

"Love 'em," Spinelli replied instantly. He'd already been advised by his mentor to praise anything that Sonny cooked or planned on cooking. And since it was somewhat apparent to him that he wasn't at the top of Mister Corinthos's Christmas List, he was going to take any opportunity he could to endear himself to the man that would hopefully be employing him. "The grub of angels."

"I don't know what that means," Sonny replied sternly, "and I don't care to find out."

The boy winced and stuffed another piece of mango in his mouth. Strike.

"It just means that he loves tortillas, Sonny." Jason and Spinelli both looked over in surprise at Elizabeth's save.

"But he already said that."

"He likes to repeat himself – likes to hear himself talk," she explained, methodically chopping up the peppers just like Sonny had once trained her. "You have that in common."

Sonny flicked a small piece of onion at her, smirking when it stuck to her neck. Elizabeth glared and brushed it away, then pantomimed throwing a bell pepper at his head. This playful domesticity proved too irritating to Jason, who plodded over to the fridge to retrieve a beer for himself and a soda for Spinelli.

"Can you get me some of what's in the jug, Stone Cold?" the boy asked, pointing to Elizabeth's murky brown green-tea-and-cola concoction. "Please? I want to try it."

Muttering under his breath, Jason walked over to where Elizabeth was standing and reached up over her head to retrieve a glass. Elizabeth, naturally, used the opportunity to lightly smack his stomach, eliciting a grunt, and scampered away to bring Sonny the chopped up peppers before Jason could do anything about it.

The skillet sizzled as the vegetables were added, and Sonny added a generous pinch of cumin. "How come you guys don't have any food at your place?"

"Stone Cold doesn't believe in grocery lists," Spinelli supplied helpfully, not seeing the scowl that Jason directed his way from across the room. "I'm down to my last orange soda, if you can believe that."

"Soda's terrible for you," Sonny couldn't resist pointing out. "I only let Elizabeth have it twice a week."

Jason and Spinelli both looked over at the feisty little thing to see how she liked hearing that she was only 'let' to do something, and were very surprised to find her smiling to herself as she diced up a large onion.

"I know it's a bone-eating, sleep-reducing, dependence-boosting poison-tonic, Mister Corinthos Sir," Spinelli felt compelled to explain. "But I can't help it. I can't do anything productive if I don't have a bottle of orange soda and a bag of barbequed chips next to me."

Elizabeth made a face. "Orange soda _and _barbequed chips? That sounds like a really gross combination."

"It's an acquired taste," Spinelli replied, "but quite delect-a-mable. I urge the Dragon to try it and see if her taste buds aren't delighted."

"Yeah, whatever." Elizabeth had finished chopping the onions and set them aside for later. "We still have that dried mint, right?"

"Use fresh," came the directive. "Just cut it up with the scissors."

Spinelli took his seat next to Jason at the table in the corner of the massive room and looked about contentedly. "What kind of music is that, Mister Corinthos Sir?"

Sonny had left his vegetables on a cool burner and was now inspecting a stack of corn tortillas with all the intensity of a diamond crafter. "Cuban."

"It's old-school," Elizabeth smiled as she selected a fresh mango from the fruit drawer in the state-of-the-art refrigerator. "They're old radio songs that were popular back in the sixties. His mother and grandmother used to listen to them when Sonny was little. They've got a nice beat, huh?"

"They're very interesting," Spinelli allowed. "The Jackal is always open to new musical experiences."

Sonny had finished laying the tortillas down on a large oven tray and was now adding the sautéed vegetables. A large block of cheddar, Parmesan, and mozzarella cheese and a grater sat nearby. "Elizabeth's been listening to these songs for years. They're all I play if I ever choose to play any music."

"Always on our cooking nights," the girl added proudly, approaching the island where Sonny worked with her uncut mango. She reached for a clean bowl as Sonny added the rest of the prepared vegetables, along with the already cut mango, and began shredding the cheeses. "It's a tradition, isn't it? Twice every month for the last five years…"

Jason watched, slightly envious, as Sonny smiled. "Like clockwork. You sure you can do that with your hand? Here, let me."

"No, it's fine," she insisted, pulling the fruit back. "It doesn't matter."

"What happened to your hand, Dragon?" Spinelli asked, gesturing to the flowered rag that was tied over Elizabeth's palm. "You cut it?"

"Burned it a little," she replied, making a face. "Grabbed a pot without realizing that it was hot. It's fine, though. The last time Sonny and I were in India, we found this really amazing balm made from the bones of cranes or something. It's really good on burns. I put some on and just tied a rag onto it – I'm fine, Sonny, really."

The older man didn't look too convinced as he folded the tortillas over and pinned the sides down with toothpicks. "You got that shirt from India, too."

"Which one?"

"The rag," he said, pointing at her hand before he hefted the large tray and slid it into the preheated oven. "That was the only piece the monkeys let you have."

Elizabeth started laughing at the memory, but Jason and Spinelli were sure that there was a piece there that they just weren't understanding.

"I'm sorry, Mister Corinthos Sir," the boy broke in, "but _monkeys_? Where did the monkeys come from?"

"India," Elizabeth replied matter-of-factly. "That's where I got my pornographic monkey lamp. And by the way, nerd, I know you stole that again this morning when you were over for breakfast, and you're not getting any dinner until you bring it back."

Spinelli scowled and used his napkin-plate to wipe his sticky fingers. "Fine. But what about the monkeys?"

"They lived all around our bungalow," Sonny chuckled. "Up in the trees – armies of them. And of course, you can't do anything to 'em because they're holy there."

"Holy?"

Sonny and Elizabeth nodded, and the brunette picked up the explanation. "This specific species of monkey helped the Hindu god Rama rescue his wife from the baboon-people – the Bandar Log from the _Jungle Book_, kinda – and so they're holy to devout Hindus. That means you can't hunt them and you can't trap them and you can't harass them in any manner. It's actually a problem over there. I can't believe you guys don't know all this."

"We spent very little time in Asia," Spinelli shrugged. "That's why. We were mostly in Europe, right, Stone Cold? I don't remember going to Asia at all."

"We were in Sarajevo for a while, and then the Dalmatian Coast."

"But that's still Europe," Spinelli pointed out. "Oh, there was that one time we skipped over to Oman, but that was just for two weeks. Besides, that's on a _peninsula_. We never really got into Asia. Definitely not India."

"It's a great place," Sonny said. "Elizabeth and I have only been there once, together, but we're planning another trip for next year."

The brunette nodded eagerly. "Yup. We actually just bought the bungalow we stayed at before – it was finally up for sale, so it's going to be even easier to go back now. I just have to remember not to bring any nice shirts…"

"Because of the monkeys?" Spinelli guessed. He still wanted to hear more about those things. The only exciting animal encounter he and Jason had had was when a bird flew into their hotel room in Amsterdam and his mentor had nearly trashed the whole place just to get it out.

Elizabeth was nodding absently as she worked. Two small but strong hands rolled the uncut mango on the cutting board, squeezing it and grinding it together until the firmness of the fruit gave way. Once juice began to spurt out the top, she picked up her clean mixing bowl and continued squeezing and mushing with her hands.

"What they do is, they sit in their trees and then start leaping onto your roof or your verandah. They do that just to see how you'll respond – if you'll let them stay or if you'll chase them off. Even if you try to chase them off, they just come right back two seconds later and advance further into your place as a challenge."

Spinelli was listening to this very intently, and even Jason was paying attention.

The memory of it made Elizabeth laugh as she squeezed the fruit's innards into the bowl. "So they basically prowl your perimeter and throw things at you if you look at them cross-eyed. I made the mistake of leaving a nice shirt out on a chair that was right by the doors leading out onto my balcony, and one of them came into my room and grabbed it."

"And I was over in my room getting ready – we were going out with a friend – when I hear her screaming," Sonny broke in with a laugh. "Remember that?"

Elizabeth cringed and shook her head, tossing the mango skins into the trash. "Oh, God, it was horrible."

"I didn't know _what _was going on," he confessed amiably. "I immediately thought – God forbid – a burglar or a cobra or something like that. So I come running in with my gun in hand, right? And what do I see?"

Jason watched the two of them share grins before Sonny laughingly told the rest of it. "She's standing on the ledge of her balcony, shaking her fist up at the tree right by her room, and I run over and there's a monkey sitting in the branches, ripping her new shirt to shreds and throwing the pieces down at her. Laughing his bright pink ass off the whole time, too."

Spinelli, too, had been watching the pair relate their story together. "Sounds like you guys had fun there," he remarked softly. "If not fun, that you made a lot of good memories."

Sonny nodded wistfully. "Yeah, we did have a great time. Ate more spices there than I ever have in my whole life. This one got sick."

"I don't do well with turmeric," Elizabeth confided in the three men. "Or curry powder. It does weird things to my system."

"She used to leave her extra food to the monkeys," Sonny frowned, shaking his head at her. "That only encouraged them more to come onto the verandahs and steal your shirts."

"Remember the time they took the baby?"

Spinelli bolted into an upright position as Sonny nodded sagely. "Okay, no way, you're making that up – they took a _baby_?"

Elizabeth nodded seriously as she mixed the diced up onions into the mango pulp. Sonny stopped preparing the pico de gallo long enough to check on his quesadillas and decided to give them three more minutes.

"Oh, yeah, it was really bad. Remember that, Sonny?"

"Terrifying," he agreed. "I've never heard a woman scream like that in my life. The mother," he elaborated for Jason and Spinelli's benefit. "It was awful."

Spinelli, however, was still having a hard time digesting this. "They just…up and took an Innocent One?"

The brunette nodded. "Yeah. We were in…gosh, where were we that day?"

"Aligarh," Sonny replied automatically. "Up north, close to the mountains."

"No, no," Elizabeth disagreed. "That's when we went to see that friend of yours who teaches at the university there. Remember? He told us about the cult figure of Masood Tommy and then we went to that lecture on nuclear biology-"

"And you fell asleep," Sonny laughed. "Then it was in Benares. Yeah, that's where it was – because we were by the Ganges that night."

"Right, Benares," Elizabeth told the boys. "It's this rural town, not too big, not too small, and we were there with one of Sonny's friends who wanted to show us a historic Hindu temple or something. We were at his place there, and from the balcony you could see next door, onto their balcony, and a woman was hanging up the wash for the day."

"She had a baby in one of those little carriers, and the kid was sitting there with her as she hung the clothes up to dry," Sonny added. "She was singing to him or talking to him, right there the whole time, and when she turned to get the last thing out of the basket, she dropped her clothespins. So she picked them all up and while her back was turned, a monkey came down from the trees, grabbed the baby, and jumped off the ledge and back into the tree."

"It took us a good few minutes to figure out just what the heck was even going on," Elizabeth admitted, her eyes still wide with wonder several years after the event.

The whole time, Jason had been watching her and Sonny as they told the tale. Elizabeth would say something, Sonny would interject and continue, and then Elizabeth would pick it right back up. They'd share their own secret looks and smiles and laughs during the whole thing, even though they were recounting the event for the benefit of others.

It reminded him of how he and Sonny used to act at the more informal meetings of the Five Families. They had their own style of communication there. Sonny would be all charm, regaling the other men with one of their stories, and Jason remembered interrupting at just the right moments to move the whole thing along. They always had their own little inside remarks, and they would always exchange similar smirky looks when they were sure that no one else knew of the subtext. They had their own rhythm, he and Sonny did, and he didn't know how he felt about watching him dance to the same beat with someone else…much less Elizabeth.

"We started yelling for his friend, right?" the brunette was saying as she cut the fresh mint leaves into the mango and onion mash. "So Rajiv Sahab comes out and sees what we're so hysterical about, and by now the woman is screaming and her family is out there on the balcony and the monkeys are all jeering and the baby's crying, and he takes a look at all this for a few seconds and then calls for the police."

"Those monkeys were something," Sonny whistled, sliding his tray gently out of the oven and setting it down quickly on the island. "The way they laughed – I'll never forget that. Remember what they did when the baby started crying?"

Elizabeth's ponytail bobbed as she nodded emphatically. "Oh, my gosh, yeah – they started rocking the kid! The monkey was actually holding the baby and rocking it, and then it put it on its shoulder and started patting the kid's back."

"And would you believe it, the kid stopped crying," Sonny filled in, using a spatula to work the quesadillas free and onto a plate.

Elizabeth slid the mango mixture and the pico de gallo over to Sonny and wiped her hands on a towel. "And so by the time the police came, this kid is having a ball. The monkeys are all playing with him and he's just happy as can be, right?"

"I never would have believed it either if I didn't see it with my own eyes," Sonny told Jason, who didn't look too trusting of the anecdote.

"So what happened?" Spinelli asked eagerly, rolling his half-finished glass of Elizabeth's concoction between his hands. "What did the police do?"

"They have their procedures for what to do when something like this happens," she told him. "But while they were doing that, the monkeys – Sonny, do you remember what they did?"

"The mom was yelling at them for her child," he explained to Spinelli, glancing down only to spoon some of Elizabeth's mango chutney onto a quesadilla. "And so the monkey holding the baby decided it would be great if he dropped the kid. They were twenty-five feet above ground, and that thing thought it would be _great _to just let the kid go."

Spinelli's eyes were as wide as saucers, and Jason had to smirk at how much the boy loved being told stories. "It didn't!"

Sonny shook his head. "Thankfully, no. But it pretended to."

Elizabeth was nodding seriously. "Oh, yeah. No joke – that monkey pretended to drop the kid and then grabbed him at the last possible second. You should have heard everyone _scream_."

"Us included," Sonny laughed. "It was terrible."

"And it didn't even just pretend to do that once," she continued, waving her hands in the air. "No – it did that easily six or seven times. It would hold the kid, dangle him down over the branch, let go, and then swing over the branch from the other side and scoop him up. The kid loved it."

"The police finally got the kid and shooed the monkeys away," Sonny sighed, setting a plate bearing a quesadilla and a side salad down onto the counter.

"Sonny and I were so freaked out that we told Rajiv Sahab, screw the temple, we're getting out of here. We spent the rest of the evening eating lamb by the Ganges, so that was nice. Had nightmares about it all, though."

She smirked to herself and fiddled with her apron. "Just goes to show you – that's Item #24,723 on the list of Why Not To Have Kids. _Depending on where you live, the monkeys could grab 'em_."

Sonny rolled his eyes and extended a plate toward Spinelli. "Would you do me a favor and take this plate out to Max? Thanks. Yours will be ready when you come back in."

"And you can use the trip as an opportunity to go over to your little penthouse and bring back my lamp," Elizabeth reminded him. "Because you're not getting so much as a radish until my monkey butt lamp is back here."

Spinelli was still murmuring something about Bandar Ones and babies as he took the plate out to the bodyguard, and Jason sipped his beer and watched Elizabeth and Sonny fix the other plates. On the other side of the kitchen now, they still continued to talk and even though Jason couldn't hear the words, he didn't need to. Sonny would say something that made Elizabeth laugh and she'd have to lean against the counter, her sleeves rolled up under her apron and her bandaged hand resting on his arm as she issued a saucy reply.

Sonny would smirk and wave a spatula in a mock-reprimanding gesture and they'd go back to their little conversation, not even noticing (and perhaps not even caring) that they had a silent audience in Jason.

And then Sonny said something that made Elizabeth giggle, and she smacked his arm with the back of her hand as she moved over to the island, closer to Jason now, to gather up the leftover ingredients. She shook her head, still smiling, and glared playfully at the moblord.

"I love our Cooking Nights."

* * *

An hour and a half later, Jason and Spinelli returned to Penthouse II after dinner with their neighbors. The boy stopped to take off his shoes and as Jason shuffled over to the couch, he flipped on the light switch.

"Wow, huh?"

The enforcer plopped down onto the cushions. "Yeah."

"I had no idea Mister Corinthos Sir and the Dragon did all of that stuff together. I thought they were the boring kind."

When Jason didn't reply, Spinelli tossed his beanie onto the desk, along with all the miscellaneous items he kept stored safely under it, and moved over toward the couch. "She rode a horse in a practice-Palio. How cool is that? Remember when we were at the Palio? That's some really intense riding."

"It was a _practice _run," Jason felt compelled to point out. "Just a run in one of the participating Italian districts to see which horse they'd enter in the actual race."

"Still cool," Spinelli shrugged. He mirrored his mentor's stance by leaning back onto the cushions and stretching his legs out onto the coffee table. "And how about – you know, I don't care if Mister Corinthos Sir _does _have a cabin up in the Alps. I just can't see him skiing."

"I didn't think he knew how," Jason admitted. "We were both up in Switzerland one year to get an associate's business, and he didn't leave the resort at all."

"He must have learned with the Dragon," the boy replied. "And, hey, what did you think about their plans for next week?"

Jason glanced over at him. "What? Going to that street fair thing in Manhattan? Sounds boring."

Spinelli didn't think so, so he voiced his disagreement in the form of a shrug. "Yeah, boring…Maybe a little fun, too. Maybe."

Jason didn't reply, and the two men sat in the dimly lit penthouse for a long moment before Spinelli broke the silence again, as Jason could always trust him to do.

"Hey, Stone Cold?"

"What?"

"We're fun, too, right?"

Jason was feeling too sluggish after that huge dinner to give Spinelli the sharp look he deserved. "What?"

"Us," the boy repeated. "We do fun things, too, right? I mean, we have cool memories, too, right?"

Jason didn't like the turn this conversation had taken, but he felt he had to answer him. "…Yeah."

"Like, we're not boring," Spinelli continued. "We can be fun and spontaneous and go skiing and snorkel by the Great Barrier Reef and watch monkeys snatch babies, right?"

_Of all the… _"Yeah, Spinelli."

Another long silence.

"So all I'm saying is that if we wanted, we could get off this couch and go do something kick-butt right now, right?"

That was something Jason felt he could fully agree to. "Yeah – yeah, we could."

"We could drive up to Canada," Spinelli pointed out, encouraged by the firm resolve in his roommate's voice. "Or…or we could drink and shoot pool until morning. Or…what else do we like to do? Well, we could cruise for chicks."

Jason smirked at that but found himself nodding. "Yeah – we can do stuff."

"We're fun, too, damn it," Spinelli agreed, smacking his palms to his thighs. "It's not only the Mister Corinthos Sirs and Dragons of the world that are allowed to be spontaneous and have fun! We can get off this couch right now and do something so fun that it'd own _their _fun like whoa."

"Yeah," Jason agreed whole-heartedly. "We could."

Neither man moved an inch, and another very long pause ensued.

"I wish we had beer."

Jason glared at his charge. "You drank the last bottle."

"I know. I still wish we had beer."

The enforcer sighed heavily and leaned his head back on the couch. "Yeah, me, too."

"It could help us be fun," Spinelli pointed out. "Beer is fun."

One of several downsides to having a conversation with Spinelli was that, unlike a woman, he couldn't just go on chattering for hours without any sort of verbal feedback; he needed engaged responses or his chattering grew more intense and focused on drawing out the desired response.

"Yeah, beer is very fun."

"Yeah." Spinelli crossed his arms over his chest and glared at his toes. "I bet we could be having some _real _fun right now if we had beer."

* * *

_Five minutes later…_

Neither Jason nor Spinelli looked up, much less opened their eyes as they rested their heads on the back of the couch, when there was a knock on the door. They were too busy having fun.

"Open."

Max poked his head into the room and entered when he saw the boys on the couch. "Hey, Jason, Spaghetti."

"Spin – ah, screw it," the boy muttered groggily. All of Mister Corinthos Sir's men called him Spaghetti no matter how many times he corrected them. He was pretty sure the Dragon had paid them all off. "What's that?"

Max looked down at the carton in his hands. "Oh – Elizabeth wanted me to bring this over for you." Hiding a smirk, he set it down on the coffee table and backed away. "Goodnight."

Jason and Spinelli stared at the six-pack carton that held only five beers and had a large pink bow taped to the top.

"She sent us beer."

The enforcer arched a brow at the parcel as if he expected it to be booby-trapped, then reached forward to pull a bottle loose. He handed it to Spinelli and then took one for himself, cracking it open and taking a small, hesitant first sip. Once he swallowed and took a longer pull, Spinelli knew that it was safe and twisted the cap off.

Before drinking, he raised his bottle in the air and looked around the room. "Thank you, Dragon."


	10. Chapter 10

**Hack 10**

Another week passed (with even more delays regarding Elizabeth's new penthouse) and Sonny was pleased to see that the kids had fallen into a rhythm. They went to school together in the morning, three days a week, and usually came home for lunch. After that, they relaxed or worked on the challenge being offered, and then it was time for all four of them to have dinner together. Whereas Spinelli and Jason usually found themselves returning to Penthouse II after that, Elizabeth could be counted on to change into something fun and flirty and go out with her boys.

They still argued and bickered, of course, over the challenges and the most random things, and Elizabeth still called Spinelli a nerd and he referred to her as a Dragon. Sonny didn't expect this to change. But their arguments were less bitter these days and were far more…reactionary. If Elizabeth, for example, claimed that Bill Gates was her man, Spinelli would immediately begin espousing the miracles of a man named Steve Jobs and the superiority of a little something called Macintosh.

Sonny and Jason felt that they could handle these arguments. They were short-lived and really didn't go anywhere, usually ending with a "nerd" and a "Dragon" remark. And the kids would leave it at that. Besides this, there were no other problems. Well, unless all the guards calling Spinelli "Spaghetti" and the fact that there was still a bug in Penthouse II could be considered problems.

And it was precisely because things were going so well that Jason and Sonny had such few qualms about leaving the kids on their own for the first time in order to attend a meeting in New Jersey. They both made sure to leave plenty of money, detailed instructions with the guards, and to exact a temporary truce treaty from both parties. Spinelli and Elizabeth both knew not to cause any trouble, ditch the guards, or try to reach either Sonny or Jason unless it was something really, really important. The two agreed to the rules and it was set: Sonny and Jason would be able to attend their meeting in South Jersey.

Unfortunately, that was the same weekend in which a nasty storm front was passing through the Tri-State area. The summer had been uncharacteristically warm so far, and they paid for it with more frequent thunderstorms than their region was used to getting. Sonny and Jason had easily beaten the storm system out of the state and were halfway through their weekend with the associates by the time the real storms hit.

It rained on and off all the next day, but the high winds proved far more troublesome. Elizabeth had been planning to go ride horses with Nikolas on Spoon Island but when she saw the ominous, yellow-gray skies and the trees thrashing about in the gale, she knew the last place she wanted to be was aboard a rickety launch on her way to Wyndemere. Nikolas would understand. In fact, he had already forbidden his entire staff to leave the island and was busy making arrangements for all of them to stay comfortably in the Cassidine Estate until the storm moved through the area.

So Elizabeth stayed in, as did Spinelli. He had made comfortable acquaintances with a couple of the other young men in his classes and had been planning to go to Jake's and shoot pool with them. He knew that Coleman wouldn't let him drink if Jason wasn't around to vouch for him, but he figured that was okay if it meant that he would finally get to hang out with some guys that he might, in a very loose sense, be able to call his friends one day if they liked him.

Staying in proved a very wise decision. The skies remained dark all through the afternoon, as if dusk had prematurely set on the waterfront town. And around seven o'clock, the real storms hit. Sheets of rain came down, followed closely by sharp cracks of lightning that exploded into the dark skies and heavy, quaking rolls of thunder.

Elizabeth didn't mind thunderstorms so much – except when Sonny was stranded somewhere away from home during one of them – and wasn't bothered as the world thundered and shook outside her balcony windows. Instead, she grabbed a hardcover copy of _The Echo Maker_ and a can of soda since Sonny was out of town and unable to monitor her soda intake over long distances. She would have gladly invited Max in to watch a movie or something instead, but her favorite bodyguard was a stickler for following all rules and procedures whenever Sonny left her in his care, so Elizabeth knew there was no way she'd convince him to leave his post.

She was halfway through the novel that her professor had recommended and was learning all sorts of things about neurology and brain function when, around eight o'clock, the storm took down the power lines.

Elizabeth looked up with a start when the entire penthouse plunged into darkness. Groaning, she let her head fall back onto the cushions. No more reading, no more playing the stereo twice as loud as Sonny usually let her. And the air-conditioning would go, too. Damn it, she had told Sonny a million times to get that back-up generator with remote access for Harborview Towers, but did he listen? Noooo. And now she had to deal with this.

She listened to the storm rage on outside the tightly shut balcony doors and after a few minutes had passed, Elizabeth finally got up. Mister Perkins was hibernating on the coffee table and she flipped the lid open and tapped on the E. She always used the same key to wake up her laptop; it was the first letter of her name and therefore, her favorite letter. Once the computer had been roused, she straightened the monitoring screen and the pale, almost fluorescent light lit up the main room of Penthouse IV.

Elizabeth used the light to make her way over to the fancy china cabinet by the dinner table, in the drawers of which Sonny usually kept used and stumpy candles. She pulled a number out, along with a Zippo lighter that was probably older than she was and then went about restoring light to the penthouse.

She set one on the coffee table after safely moving Mister Perkins out of the way, one on the dining table, and one on top of the fireplace, then moved about the room to light them, ceremoniously saying, "Fiat lux" over each one. God complexes were fun.

Not wanting Mister Perkins to use up all his charged batteries, she restored the computer to its hibernatory state and flopped down on the couch with yet another one of her battery-operated toys: her mp3 player. It had a fifteen-hour battery life and she wasn't at all worried about that running out.

So that was how she spent the better part of an hour, half-dozing on the couch with her earbud headphones in place. No Sonny making her do things, no Jason making her mad at things, and no Spinelli being annoying about things. It wasn't a bad way to spend an evening.

* * *

_Across the hall in Penthouse II…_

Now he understood why the Dragon liked to keep Mister Corinthos Sir's penthouse so tightly locked and bolted shut with the AC roaring. As Spinelli struggled and fought with the balcony doors and wayward curtains, trying to close off the penthouse to the violent storm, he wished that he and Jason had the same sense.

But, no. They had to go and believe in fresh air and the wide open skies. They had to leave every single freaking window and door in their penthouse wide open to the forces of nature. They had to deal with minor flooding of the bedroom carpets, potential and alarming water damage to Princess Peach, shattered glasses in the kitchen and upturned bottles in the bathrooms that had been knocked over by the storm winds, and general Wizard-of-Oz-like conditions.

And by 'they,' Spinelli meant 'he,' because Stone Cold was out of town.

Damn it all to Hell.

It took him almost an hour to make Penthouse II watertight and clean up all the damage. And after inspecting Princess Peach for the millionth time and making _absolutely _sure that her hard drive and unmentionables hadn't been damaged, Damien Spinelli decided that a cold, wet, lonely penthouse with half a take-out portion of moldy garlic bread in the fridge was absolutely no place for a growing boy like himself.

So he decided to head over to the Dragon's den and see what she was up to. And maybe to steal some of her food.

Trying to block out sounds of the thunderstorm, Spinelli closed the door securely behind himself and sought out Max in the hallway.

"Hey, Spaghetti," the guard nodded. "You need something? Anything I can do?"

The boy shook his head and looked around the desolate floor. "Quiet out here."

"Sure is."

Spinelli eyed the security cameras perched up by the ceiling and then looked at Max. "Those things – they're out of commission, aren't they?"

Max nodded. "Yup. Storm took out everything. My brother just radioed in from the warehouse and he says the power's out in the whole town. Try not to worry, though. We've got men downstairs in the lobby, and I'm stationed on this floor. And I'm not going anywhere."

"Good to know," the boy replied before jerking his thumb toward Penthouse IV. "Is the Dragon home?"

Max nodded again. "Yeah, haven't heard much out of the Toothpick for a while now. She might be sleeping or something."

"I'm going to let myself in," Spinelli told him, reaching for the door. "Goodnight, Silent Sentinel."

"Same to you, Spaghetti."

Just as Spinelli poked his head into the penthouse, a sharp crack of lightning touched down right outside the balcony doors. He jumped at the explosive sound and the bright flash that followed, and the sound of him hitting his shoulder on the doorframe alerted Elizabeth. The brunette took one earbud out of her ear and propped herself up on the couch.

"Nerd?"

"Felicitations, Dragon," he replied, holding his hand up and slinking in. He shut the door firmly behind him and leaned against it, trying not to visibly wince when the thunder rolled outside. It wasn't as bad in Penthouse IV as it was in Penthouse II; it just sounded so much closer there, across the hall.

"What do you want?" Elizabeth groused, swinging her legs down onto the floor. She had been having such a peaceful evening, too. "Don't tell me you're afraid of a little old thunderstorm."

When the lightning flashed again, she got a good look at his face and saw that the boy had paled slightly. Her words appeared to have pinned him to the door and the look on his face almost made Elizabeth hold her breath.

He swallowed and made a conscious effort to move an inch away from the door. "…My mother died during a thunderstorm so, yeah, I guess I am afraid of them."

She could have sworn that her heart skipped a beat at the sound of his low, gravelly voice, and Elizabeth dug her toes into the carpet and removed the other earbud. Without looking away from him, she turned her mp3 player off and left it on the cushion.

"Oh."

They stood and stared at each other for a long time, not sure who had the next move. It was always a game between them, and now they found themselves stalled in a check.

Elizabeth moved first, scooting over to the other end of the couch and pulling her legs up with her in a silent offer for Spinelli to sit. "So…what are you doing here?"

The boy shrugged and slowly sat. "The penthouse was really quiet. I was just wondering what you were doing."

She shrugged in reply as well. "As you can see, nothing much. I don't want to use Mister Perkins because he's running on charge. Plus, even though we have one of those power adapter things that protects from surges, I don't trust this storm."

"I'm not risking it with Princess Peach, either," Spinelli confessed. "She's been through enough for one night."

"You talk about your computer in vaguely sexual ways," Elizabeth observed. "I'd be creeped out if I didn't do the same thing."

"Stone Cold hates it."

"Sonny does, too."

"That's why I do it."

"Hey! Me, too!"

They enjoyed that rare moment of agreement for a few minutes, each one wearing a matching smile. After a while, Spinelli fidgeted and looked over his shoulder.

"So…you eaten yet?"

Elizabeth shook her head. "Nope. I was actually planning to go to Wyndemere tonight and ride with Nikolas."

"I'm hoping you mean on a horse."

She rolled her eyes and kicked his thigh. "Yes, on a horse. Anyway, we had dinner plans, too. He was having Mrs. Lansbury make roasted lamb with mint jelly."

The boy rested a hand on his gurgling stomach. "Yum."

"With wild, seasoned brown rice and vegetables."

His tummy rolled. "Ah."

"And desert coffee and chocolate-dipped biscotti for afterwards."

"Okay, I can't take it anymore!" Spinelli burst out, turning around on the couch so that he was facing her. "I haven't eaten all day, and the only thing in the penthouse is a piece of garlic bread but there are things growing on it and I think I saw a Smurf or two living down there and Stone Cold doesn't make the grocery lists and then he makes fun of me when I make one and then he calls me a girl and I'm hungry and I want some of Mister Corinthos Sir's heavenly cuisine."

Elizabeth listened to this whole rant with wide eyes and only spoke when she was positive that nothing else was going to come out of Spinelli's mouth. "Well, you're kind of out of luck because I finished off the last of the leftovers from last night for lunch, so…"

The boy slumped down on the couch, dejected. "We're going to starve. The crafty Jackal and the mighty Dragon, both going down the same way in the end."

She rolled her eyes and swung her legs off the couch to stand. "Not likely. I was actually going to get dinner started when you barged in, and I _guess _I can make an extra plate if you're convinced you're going to waste away to nothing."

"I am!" he answered immediately, jumping up off the couch. "I swear."

Elizabeth didn't even glance over her shoulder as she led the way to the kitchen. "Well, one can only hope."

* * *

After starving away in Penthouse II all day, the kitchen in Penthouse IV was indeed the Promised Land to Damien Spinelli. He watched in awe as Elizabeth went to work, sure that she was going to create something as delectable as her mentor would have if he were present.

First, she ordered him to take care of the little things. He brought out the candles and lit up the entire kitchen so that his Dragon would have plenty of light to work by. Then he selected the pot she needed, got out the olive oil from the cabinet, and even sampled a spoonful at her behest. It made him cough, which in turn made Elizabeth laugh as she explained that the more the oil produced that result, the better it was.

"Start cutting the tomatoes for me," she ordered, putting three large washed tomatoes down on the cutting board. "I'm going to get out the rest of the spices and wash the lettuce."

Spinelli saluted her and began deliberating over what knife to use. This continued for a good five minutes – after all, he didn't want to mess anything up for his uncharacteristically and temporarily benevolent hostess – until Elizabeth, fed up with his indecision after having gotten the pasta to a boil, grabbed a knife and random and put it down in front of him.

"You ever cook?"

"Not really," he answered, slicing and dicing the tomatoes with startling efficiency. His skill was what had prompted the question in the first place, but Spinelli didn't realize that. "Stone Cold and I weren't big on cooking. We either ate on the run, getting whatever we could, or we went to the really nice, five-star restaurants and stuff."

If he had looked up from his work, he would have noticed the way the corner of Elizabeth's mouth lifted. "Cool."

He was chopping methodically now, the knife clunking rhythmically against the wood. "Yeah. It wasn't anywhere near as glamorous as it sounds, thought. For all the lobsters and prime steaks we ate, we also had enough days of skipping meals entirely, or eating…really questionable things."

"Ugh," the brunette grimaced, checking her spices to make sure she had everything. "I don't even want to _hear _about it. Say what you want about Sonny – most people do – but I wouldn't trust my diet to anyone else. He always makes sure I eat a balanced meal, and he's a wonderful cook, too."

"Yeah." Spinelli peeked up at her for the briefest of moments. "Mister Corinthos Sir seems to enjoy taking care of you."

Elizabeth trailed her fingers lightly across the edge of the counter, lifting the lid slightly to check on the pasta. "He needs someone to take care of. All the people he loved in his life either died or left him, and it means a lot to him, doing what he does for a living, to be able to take care of someone and watch out for them. I try to let him do that as much as he needs to."

"I noticed it last week," the boy smirked in reply. "When he was talking about only 'letting' you have two sodas a week. To be honest, the Jackal was surprised that someone could control the bloodthirsty Dragon that way."

Elizabeth had to laugh at that. "Yeah, well, he put a roof over my head for the last six years. The least I can do is put up with his little rules, right?"

"I guess."

"Doesn't your Stone Cold One or whatever you call him have rules for you?"

This question was interesting enough that Spinelli actually stopped dicing the tomatoes to consider his answer. "Well…not really. I don't remember him ever telling me not to do something. But then again, the Jackal has always stuck fairly close to Stone Cold's side and been the Spock to his Kirk-"

"The Samwise to his Frodo," Elizabeth couldn't resist adding.

"Exactly," Spinelli nodded. "I just stayed close to him and made sure to do exactly what he did. And we never really had any problems."

"Except when you made that Belgian supermodel think he was gay."

Several years after the fact, the boy still cringed. "That was awful. I tried to explain later to her, but I think I just made it worse. Oh, here are your tomatoes."

Elizabeth, who had been adding olive oil to a skillet, looked over her shoulder in surprise. "Done already? You're good with a knife."

"Hello? Farmboy – hi," he replied, jerking a thumb toward his chest. "Before Stone Cold found me, I was an apprentice to a butcher in our village. I can slaughter a cow in my sleep."

"Good to know," Elizabeth got out slowly, reminding herself never to put one of her larger knives in Spinelli's hands.

"Of course, we didn't have all these fancy knives," he continued, poking around in Sonny's drawer. "We just had two, and they were both big and sharp. I knew how to use them on animals _and _on people."

His statement surprised her so much that Elizabeth almost spilled the balsamic vinegar she was attempting to add to the tomatoes in the skillet. "What? On _people_?"

Spinelli nodded. "Tuscany isn't all wine-tasting and song, you know. Things got bad sometimes. I had to defend myself. There wasn't anyone else around to do it, so I had to make sure I was safe. We didn't have Silent Sentinels in the hall, or those security cameras…not that they're much good right now, anyway. Anyone could just walk right up those stairs, take out the Premiere Sentinel there, and walk in through your front door."

This was something, surprisingly, that Elizabeth had never considered.

The power had gone out several times during her six years at Harborview Towers and never _once _had she considered that not only did it mean that her blowdryer and TV and air-conditioning were out of commission, but also the security cameras out in the hall. The one person standing between her and all the horrible things Sonny warned her about was Max.

She had come to take her secure life in the Towers for granted – so much so that such a thing never once occurred to her! And it took a stupid, annoying little nerd to make her think about it for the first time.

"Oh, my God – you're right! And what if there's more than one? They can easily overpower Max and – and he can't shoot them all, and-"

"It's all right," Spinelli assured her, looking quite unconcerned. "The Silent Sentinel is quite capable – you told me so yourself. And no one's getting over to Harborview in this storm, anyway. And even if they do…"

He wiped his hands on a dish towel and reached behind himself. When he drew his hands forward again, Elizabeth's eyes immediately fell to the silver Glock nestled comfortably in his strong grip.

"No worries."

She eyed him suspiciously as he made sure the safety was on, then slipped the weapon back into the waistband of his beige and maroon plaid shorts. "You know how to use that thing?"

This time, it was Spinelli's turn to give her a skeptical look. "You think Stone Cold would let the Jackal follow him around for four years without training him in the art of using firearms?"

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and resumed stirring the tomatoes. Spinelli watched as she added a pinch of oregano and a few leaves of fresh basil. "So…do you know how to use a weapon?"

"I'm proficient in the use of small firearms," came the reply. "I went to an American public school."

"Touché, Dragon."

"Do me a favor?" She looked over her shoulder and found him attentive. "Can you open the windows? It's boiling in here now that the AC's worn off."

The request alarmed the poor boy. "You don't want to do that – trust me, nothing good will come from un-battening down the hatches!"

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "The rain is falling _away _from our side of the building. You're facing a different way, so of course it would come into your place. All I know is I'm going to roast if you don't help me open some windows."

The boy shrugged and did as he was asked, and was pleased to see that the Dragon had been right. The wind was still fairly strong so he couldn't open the window too much, but it was good enough to reduce some of the humidity in the penthouse.

"Do me another favor? Stir the tomatoes for two more minutes and then take them out into that dish," she directed, turning the spoon over to him. "It's so muggy in here – I _have _to change out of this thing. Man, I hope the power comes back soon – and that Sonny and Jason get home soon. This weather is the worst."

And as Spinelli stood by the stove, stirring the tomatoes in their oregano-balsamic sauce, it occurred to him that even though this weather _was _the worst, he hadn't been reminded of the fact for a good half hour spent in her company.

* * *

"I hope the kids are all right," Sonny muttered, still shaking the water off his coat as he and Jason stepped out onto their floor. "The roads are flooded, the winds are about fifty miles per hour, and all the power's out. Not a good night to be home alone."

"Mister C, Jason," Max called out, nodding in greeting as the men approached. "You made it home okay?"

Sonny nodded. "Got stalled around Ocean Shore and had to make a messy detour. Wasn't too bad – we didn't get caught in any of the flooded areas. How're things here?"

"Toothpick had plans to go meet Mister Cassidine," Max relayed, not noticing the way Jason's mouth curled downward. "But when she got news of the weather reports, she cancelled her plans and stayed in all day. Same with Spaghetti. I think he got hungry a little while ago and went into the penthouse to see if Toothpick had anything she could spare, and I haven't seen them since."

Sonny closed his eyes at the thought of the two actually being in such close quarters for a whole night. "Chances are good they've already killed each other."

"See, that's what I thought," Max laughed, "but then I heard them talking about Italy a little while ago, so I knew they were there."

"Thanks, Max." The mobster nodded to his guard as he held the door for him and entered his penthouse. "Eliz- Oh."

Jason stepped in on Sonny's heels and saw what had his best friend so surprised. The power was still out all over town, but Penthouse II was softly lit with dozens of flickering candles. They were spread out all over the room in little groups: five on the empty dining table, two set on a dish on Sonny's desk, safely away from all his work, a whole row of them on the mantle, and small clusters of two or three on all the end tables.

Elizabeth and Spinelli sat on large cushions that they had pulled down to the floor, and the coffee table was filled with food. There was a covered dish of still-warm linguini that Spinelli was currently scarfing down with what looked to be a hearty tomato sauce. A fresh cut salad sat in a large green bowl with perfectly matched tongs, and there was a large basket of bread with a little dish of butter, and two tall glasses of ice water.

It all looked so oddly…romantic.

And as if that wasn't unsettling and nauseating enough, Jason could barely believe his eyes when they came to a rest on Elizabeth. Whereas Spinelli looked the same with his shaggy hair and plaid shorts and running socks, the normally buttoned-up brunette looked drastically different.

The warmth of the stormy summer night had forced her to change out of her slacks and collared shirt into something more comfortable, and the brunette had selected a pair of slim-fitting denim knickers that ended just above her knee, allowing her to comfortably sit cross-legged on the floor as she was now, and a white cotton wife-beater tank. The humidity levels in the penthouse were high, and her normally straight chestnut hair had transformed into bouncy, fluffy, slightly frizzy waves that tumbled down her back despite her attempt to keep them knotted up in a loose twist.

When Sonny looked over at his partner to see if he wanted the first word, he found Jason's gaze firmly trained on Elizabeth and decided he'd better spare him the embarrassment of failing to form a coherent thought.

"What are you kids doing?"

"Eating," Elizabeth replied, hopping up from her seat to give Sonny a kiss on the cheek. "We just made dinner. Are you hungry? We didn't expect you back so early. How'd the meeting go? What's it like outside? You got home okay, didn't you?"

"We're fine, everything's fine," he assured her, tucking a loose curl behind her ear. "The roads are a mess, but Francis got us home fine. So…you kids are eating, huh?"

"Not kids," Spinelli got out around a mouthful of linguini.

"You've got spaghetti sauce all over your face."

Spinelli glanced at Elizabeth and decided to take a chance. "_You've_ got spaghetti sauce all over your face."

As he had hoped, Sonny rolled his eyes and let it go. "Thank you, Spinelli."

"We should go," Jason announced abruptly, drawing surprised looks from everyone in the room. "Me and Spinelli," he clarified unnecessarily.

The boy quickly stuffed another piece of bread in his mouth as Elizabeth frowned at his mentor. "He's eating – you can go after he finishes. Besides, from what I hear, there's absolutely nothing in your fridge and you don't feed him."

"I feed him," Jason replied defensively. "He eats."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and turned away from him, returning to her seat on the floor. "If you say so. But Nerd's not going anywhere until he finishes all of his food. I didn't spend an hour in the kitchen for him to pick at it and then dance out of here. Take more salad, nerd."

He did as he was told and then, thinking of his own safety once they were back in Penthouse II, offered his plate up to his mentor. "Stone Cold?"

Jason scowled and moved past him, flopping down on Sonny's favorite armchair. "Just eat so we can go."

"It's past someone's bedtime," Elizabeth observed, making a little face that made Spinelli laugh. Jason's dark glare went unnoticed as the brunette turned to her own meal and speared a radish with her fork.

Sonny, nervous about the candles on his desk, blew them out before making his way over to the wet bar where he poured a scotch for himself and Jason, then took a seat on the sofa behind Elizabeth so that she sat at his feet. "Things weren't too bad around here?"

"The winds were really fast about an hour ago," Spinelli answered, nodding in emphasis. "_Really _bad."

Jason rolled his eyes and groaned. "How much damage did you do to the penthouse?"

Elizabeth slid him a sideways look. "From what I hear, _you're_ the one that always leaves all the windows open."

"How can you hear so much if you never stop talking?"

Spinelli hid his laughter in another piece of bread, already knowing the secrets behind the dynamic of the Dragon and his Stone Cold. They had discussed his mentor cursorily during the evening and he had the distinct feeling that the Dragon enjoyed getting him riled up. He had long since suspected that she was one of very few people that got Stone Cold to regress in maturity and bicker.

And that was partly true. Jason had no idea, in fact, what it was about Elizabeth that had him so willing to trade insults and regress to the state of a teenager. It annoyed him that she played the dutiful, loving little girl to Sonny; the guy's girl to Stan and the guards; the little vixen to Nikolas, no doubt; antagonist but fair-weather supporter to Spinelli; and a total witch to him. It annoyed him that there could be so many sides to one person.

Ever since he woke up from the accident, he had made it a point to avoid people like that. The car wreck had turned him into a simple man. He said what he thought and he did what he said. He didn't have different personalities that he changed in and out of like his clothes. And he liked his friends to be the same. Sonny was a man of honor, a man that lived by a code similar to his own. Spinelli was a trusting, loyal sidekick that never let him down. Nikolas was a powerful, just Prince with refined tastes and a shrewd sense of observation. And Max, Johnny, and Francis were staunch, solid, trustworthy associates that he knew he could always count on.

And that's why Elizabeth was even more of an enigma. She didn't fit into any of those roles, and sometimes it seemed that she fit all of them too well, which was also disturbing. She could be intensely competitive and competent, like she was during the tech challenges; she could be fiercely loyal and supportive, like she was whenever Sonny was facing difficulties with the organization; she could be predatorial and territorial, like she had been when he and Spinelli first came home. She could be all of those things, and that was unsettling because always felt that in doing so, she was keeping something hidden from them all.

And even tonight – what the hell was this about? She had cooked Spinelli dinner. She hadn't slapped together a peanut butter sandwich like Jason would have if he heard the boy whining. Oh, no – she had put together an entire meal right down to the freshly cut salad and the freshly prepared tomato sauce and garlic butter. He remembered her saying that she only cooked for someone special, and that was what made this whole thing all the more disconcerting.

The thought was unpleasant and Jason hunkered down in the armchair with his scotch, glaring at the two kids as they tried to remember just what they had put in the salad that was purple and crinkly. Sonny might have been hoping for an eventual alliance, but that was the last thing that Jason decided he wanted to happen here.


	11. Chapter 11

**Hack 11**

Jason scowled at Spinelli's head all the way back to Penthouse II, but it was no use: the boy was too stuffed up on linguini and bread to give a damn. And when they got back to the dim, musty-smelling apartment suite, he kicked off his shoes and flopped comfortably down on the couch, ready to sleep away his full stomach.

Jason eyed him warily as he took off his muddy shoes. "So…you and Elizabeth had dinner together."

Spinelli smiled dreamily. "Yup. It was _sooo _good, Stone Cold, you have no idea."

The enforcer grimaced and moved over to where the boy sat, taking the opportunity to kick his legs off the coffee table. "Yeah."

He nodded. "A perfect evening…and I mean that in every way."

There was a smugness to his tone that Jason sure as hell didn't appreciate. What did Spinelli have to be so smug about? He couldn't honestly think that tonight had been a turning point in his antagonistic relationship with Sonny's ward.

Oh, God – what if Spinelli thought he was falling for Elizabeth? God damn, Jason would _never _get any peace then. It'd be like a really bad after-school drama for months. No one sustained a crush like Spinelli did.

"So the food was good."

Spinelli nodded even though it wasn't a direct question. "Oh, yeah. Dragon is every bit as good a cook as Mister Corinthos Sir. Everything was amazing. And so simple, too! She actually told me how to make it in case I'm ever hungry again. All you had to do to make the sauce was sauté a bunch of tomatoes with balsamic vinegar and a little oregano. And then you just put it over pasta – what could be easier? I ask you, Stone Cold."

"No idea."

"Exactly," the boy nodded. "From now on, whenever I'm hungry, that's what I'm eating. She showed me how to make _everything_. And you know, I was kind of surprised. She said before that she only cooked for someone special. The Jackal assumed she was talking about Mister Corinthos Sir or the Prince of Transylvania, because those are the only two guys she's ever mentioned in any sort of affectionate way, you know?"

Jason glared at a point on the wall. "Yeah, don't read too much into it."

"I don't know why the Dragon doesn't have a solid love interest," Spinelli continued obliviously. "Well, no, I do know – it's because she's a total Dragon. But she's pretty enough, right? She didn't look too tragic tonight – something about her hair and her sparse garments made her look…I don't know, softer. Less psycho-dangerous, which, let's face it, can only help matters. Don't you think so, Stone Cold?"

Oh, he thought so, all right. Those gentle, bouncy curls and that rumpled white tank that molded so close to her petite frame…She did look softer, as Spinelli said. Damn touchable, at that.

Not that Jason would ever admit it out loud, much less in a bugged room.

"Whatever."

"So, yeah, I don't know why she doesn't have a boyfriend." His voice was slower now, sleepier, as Spinelli rested his head against the back of the couch. "I mean, sure, she's scary, but with a body like that, you've gotta figure that there'd be enough guys out there that would be able to overlook that tragic personality flaw, right?"

Yeah, there was no way he was having this conversation with the little nerd. So he just grunted.

"Careful. She's listening."

Spinelli lifted his head. "Oh, that's okay, Stone Cold. The Jackal is not worried. See, the Dragon and I had a most candid conversation today about all this competitive business."

Now this was mildly interesting. "Yeah?"

He nodded proudly. "Yup. We agreed that we wouldn't be offended by all the mean remarks and dirty tricks pulled during the duration of this challenge. It's not personal – it's business. We both agreed, and now we're on velvet."

That wasn't as good as he hoped. "So you didn't find out where the bug is?"

Spinelli smiled and reached for his beanie and pulled a pen and an old, folded up Post-It note out from under it. Jason watched curiously as he scribbled something on the paper and handed it to him.

_Better. I bugged her cell phone._

Unable to help himself, Jason grinned and tucked the scrap into his pocket. "Sounds like you two had a good night together. Good job."

Spinelli smiled to himself and rested his head on the back of the couch. "You didn't train no fool, Stone Cold."

* * *

By the time Elizabeth's new penthouse was finally ready, Jason was beginning to think he couldn't take it much longer. He ran into her every single time he went over to Sonny's, and the encounters were getting to be seriously trying.

She'd always come down the stairs, looking ridiculously prim in her usual slacks and collared little summer shirts with her hair carefully coifed, and it seemed as if he was always waiting for her downstairs. They'd exchange barbs and mild innuendo (that was usually her doing; she never missed such an opportunity) until Sonny broke it up by changing the subject.

The stop and go, restrain and release was getting to be really…hot.

Very few women had ever gotten him as riled up as she did, and if their present interactions were simply _verbal _ones, well, Jason didn't think he could handle imagining what their more intense interactions would be like. Not that that stopped him from imagining, of course, but that was hardly the point.

She understood the game, too – he was sure of it. There was no mistaking the devilish twinkles in her sapphire eyes, or the way those plush lips curled just so as they sparred. The girl knew what she was doing; Jason just hoped to God he did, too.

He also hoped that Sonny hadn't noticed the underlying fire and attraction there. It was pretty reasonable to think that his best friend had no clue, but Jason couldn't be a hundred percent sure. Sonny was usually a little too self-preoccupied to notice all of what was going on around him, and Jason had been very careful to make sure that his partial dislike of the girl was wholly apparent. So he wasn't _too _worried about Sonny, but that would still be a problem he'd face eventually if things moved forward with Elizabeth.

And then, he'd hope that Sonny wouldn't be a total jackass about the whole thing. That was really all he could hope for.

He had been relieved to realize that Spinelli did not, in fact, have any grand crush on Elizabeth. It was good – the boy would only get his feelings stomped on. Elizabeth was way out of his league, and nothing was likely to come of it. It was good that Spinelli had been spared the eventual embarrassment of lusting after a girl that barely looked at him twice.

Still, Jason had to admit that he'd been a bit concerned after Elizabeth whipped up that home-cooked meal for the boy, but a casual conversation with Sonny had cleared things up. It turned out that the girl was physically incapable of slapping together a grilled cheese sandwich or warming up a cup of instant soup if she was hungry; every single meal, whether she shared it with Sonny or ate alone, was a full affair and each of the food groups were usually represented. That was how her mentor had trained her, apparently.

So that was good to know.

It was also good to know a number of other things that Jason and Spinelli became privy to due to the boy's ingenious tap on Elizabeth's cell phone. She and Stan sometimes had technically oriented conversations over the phone, and Spinelli would always pull out a notebook and a pen and jot down notes if the territory was new to him. The boy also got wind of Elizabeth putting together a secret database for Sonny's coffee empire and beat her to the punch by submitting one of his own making first. Sonny had been thrilled; the Dragon had been breathing fire.

Game, set, and match. An eye for an eye, and all that.

They really didn't beat themselves up about the ethical dilemmas of what they were doing.

Besides, Jason had no problem with the idea of the Dragon getting all feisty and fired up when she figured out that the tables had been turned. If anything, the prospect was enticing.

But even though it was enticing, it was still a prospect and not a reality, which meant that Jason had to seek similar prospects elsewhere. That was why he usually went to Jake's to do such scouting. It was a discreet little bar by the docks where a bunch of the Corinthos-Morgan men gathered sometimes to play pool and drink. There were several rooms for rent available upstairs, and he'd had one for several years now – one that he always put to good use, of course.

And that was what he was doing tonight as he entered the unusually busy bar. Jake's was rarely so full of laughter and conversation, and so Jason stopped over in the main room to see what was going on. Coleman was manning the counter as usual, keeping an eye on his patrons, and Jason immediately spotted a couple of his guards. Then he spotted more of them, standing around in a little group in their black pants and shirtsleeves and right at the center of that group…

Elizabeth.

She was perched on the edge of a pool table with three guards playing a round behind her, dressed in a pair of skinny jeans and layered t-shirts with her curly hair pulled back in a ponytail, and appeared to be telling some sort of story. Her elbow rested on Ritchie's shoulder and was gesturing with her other hand, her eyes twinkling as the guards laughed at whatever it was that she was relating.

Well, this was an interesting turn of events.

Jason took off his jacket and put it up on the coat rack by the door, then sauntered over to the bar without taking his eyes off of Elizabeth. Interesting, indeed. Coleman looked up when he saw the enforcer approached and immediately took a beer out of the cooler and slid it over. Jason caught it off the counter and easily twisted it open to take a pull. Maybe he'd end up putting the room upstairs to _great _use tonight instead of merely _good_.

The little group had gotten thinner as a few guards trickled over to the bar to get more drinks, and a few others drifted over to the dart board in the back. Elizabeth and Stan remained by the pool table, and the two of them talked quietly about something and exchanged laughs. As Jason drew near, they both looked up in surprise.

"Jason?" Elizabeth's brows pulled slightly together. "What are you doing here?"

"Jason," Stan nodded respectfully. "Good to see you. If you'll excuse me…" He wiggled his brows at Elizabeth and touched her elbow briefly. "I'm going to go get some tequila – meet you over there in a few minutes."

She nodded and smiled as he left, then turned curious eyes up to Jason. "You come to Jake's?"

He was usually pretty discreet in his visits. "Yeah, sometimes."

"Huh, would not have guessed that," she murmured, toying with the chalk she held in her hands. "So…'sup?"

Jason wasn't too sure what that meant, much less that it was an actual word, but he forged on anyway. This was his scene; this was his element, and he was more than certain that with just a few carefully dropped remarks, he could get her to go from playing a friendly little game of pool down here to playing another friendly little game upstairs.

"Nothing much. You come here pretty often, don't you?"

She nodded happily. "Oh, yeah. Jake's is kind of my place. Sonny and I used to come here a lot. He's the one that taught me how to play pool and shoot darts accurately."

Okay, there was no way that was true. Jason had to damn near twist Sonny's arm to get him to come to Jake's with him and even then, his best friend usually sat in a booth and drank his beer and then asked if they could go home yet. He rarely socialized with the other patrons, barely glanced at the pool tables, and certainly _never _picked up women.

"You don't believe me," Elizabeth smiled smugly, her eyes twinkling at the skeptical look on his face. "It's true – ask Coleman. Or better yet, ask Sonny himself. He taught me everything I know about pool and I'm pretty good now, if I do say so myself."

Jason reached over and picked up a cue, hefting it before deciding that it would do. This was the time to turn on the endless Morgan charm. Taking a small step toward her, he cocked his head toward the table and gave her one of his best sly smiles. "Good enough to play me right now?"

To his great surprise, instead of gracing him with that familiar saucy little smile and reaching for a cue, the brunette tilted her head to the side and regarded him plainly.

"Actually, Jason, thanks, but I'd rather not."

It threw him a little but he was determined not to lose his rhythm. She was probably just playing hard to get, and it would have disappointed him a little if she didn't keep that restrain-and-release rhythm of theirs going.

"Why not?" His blue eyes twinkled and he made sure to smirk just a little. He had a feeling that she liked him when he smirked like that. Maybe. "Afraid of-"

"I'd just rather not," she repeated kindly but firmly. "Thanks for the offer, though. You know, Trevor over there is just a shark when it comes to this game – he'd probably be happy to take you up on it."

Well that was no good – he didn't know _Trevor_. He didn't like _Trevor_. He didn't want to sleep with _Trevor_.

"I-"

"It's just that I don't really see the point," Elizabeth told him gently. "I mean, I spend most of my day working on my computer or going to school, and this is the time that I get to kick back and have some fun with my friends, and I really just don't see the point of making small talk and playing a game with someone that can't stand me and that I can't stand in return."

In his shock at her candid explanation, Jason barely registered Stan's voice in the background.

"Hey, Liz, you coming or what? We've got it all set up over here!"

She looked over to where her best friend and some of the guards stood by the dartboard, armed with shot glasses and a full bottle of tequila, and quickly waved at them to take down the picture of Spinelli they had pinned to the bull's eye. When Jason turned to see what was going on, the picture had been torn down and was safely hidden behind Marco's back.

"Just a little drinking game we made up," Elizabeth smiled, glad that Jason hadn't seen their target. Damn nerd should have known better than to tap her phone; he deserved what he got now.

"We shoot darts at a picture of someone we dislike and drink based on the points we get. If you hit either of the eyes or dead center in the forehead, you get to make everyone else drink three shots. It's a real killer. I can't even think straight afterwards."

Jason's mind was still spinning with the lashing she had given him – which was not at all hot – and he looked down, slightly dazed, when she patted his bicep with her small hand.

"So thanks for the offer, but I think I'm going to go over there." With a bright smile, the brunette removed her hand and trotted over to where Stan and the guards were waiting for her to take a few practice shots before Jason left and it was safe to put that picture of Spinelli back up.

That had not gone at all the way he had planned.

This was different from trading barbs and insulting him. This was even different from playing hard to get. This was something else entirely, something that no other woman in his life had ever sprung on him.

This was plain and simple rejection.

He had been wrong about everything. She hadn't known that this was a game. She hadn't been playing according to their rules and the unique rhythm between them. And she honestly had no clue that he was terribly, almost painfully, attracted to her while still kind of disliking her.

Fuck.

All this time, he'd read her completely wrong. When she riled him up, he returned the favor and while he was thinking that she enjoyed the little sparring matches, she was actually just irritated with him. He thought that was what this whole thing between them was: the stop and go, the restrain and release, denying the peculiar attraction and playing with fire.

And all this time, he could not have been more wrong.


	12. Chapter 12

**Hack 12**

"He's just so weird, you know?"

Stan bent over to inspect the drawers of the new armoire that Sonny had purchased to decorate Elizabeth's new penthouse. "Yeah. The guy's a piece of work."

"It's like he runs all hot and cold on me," she continued, tearing the plastic off a pair of bed sheets and motioning for Stan to move to the other side of the queen-sized bed. "He's made it _very _clear since day one that he can't stand me, which is perfectly fine considering that I made it _equally _clear since day one that he doesn't impress me. He rags on me all the time – again, a two-way street, I admit to that – and he's forever pimping his darling little nerd protégé, and then he has the balls to ask me if I want to play a game of pool with him?"

"Maybe he likes you," her best friend suggested, not fully believing it himself. "I don't know. I remember back in fourth grade, I used to pick on Marci Jenkins like you wouldn't believe just because I thought she was cute and really nice. I think I made her cry once."

Elizabeth laughed and snapped the fitted sheet under the corner of her bed, waiting for him to do the same. "Thankfully, I'm pretty sure that I'm not Jason's Marci Jenkins. God, shoot me if that ever happens."

"Oh, it's already taken care of," Stan promised, smirking at her from across the bed. "I was planning on doing a lot worse, anyway, if you ever went for the guy."

She laughed again and began spreading the sheet on top as Stan tried to wrestle two new pillows into the appropriate cases. "Seriously, though – I still can't figure out what was up with that. I mean, I can't stand you, you can't stand me – get out the noisemakers, you know? What was he expecting? Maybe he was just really, _really _lonely or something."

"Or maybe…he was trying to figure out where you hid the bug," Stan replied, snapping his fingers. "That has to be it – he was trying to get in good with you so you'd feel bad and tell him where the bug is."

Elizabeth stopped, both hands braced on the mattress, and nodded slowly. "You're right – that has to be it. Oh, he's a sneaky guy. Trying to guilt me into tipping my hand. Not in this lifetime, pal."

"Hey, just for kicks," Stan began, tilting his head to the side conspiratorially, "where _is _the bug?"

The brunette's lips curled into a thin smile. "Nice try, but no."

Her best friend launched the cased pillow at her from across the room. "Oh, come on! It's a professional insult! I'm the bug guy, you're using _my _handiwork, and I can't even find the damn thing! I swept that penthouse _twice _with him barking in my ear and riding my hump every step of the way – twice!"

She lifted her shoulder in a coy shrug. "That's what you get for outsmarting yourself."

"Just give me the serial number," he pleaded, "that's all. Come on."

But Elizabeth just shook her head. "No can do, Stanford. A girl's gotta guard her secrets."

* * *

"It's going to feel so strange without her," Sonny murmured as he twisted his butter rolls into crescents on the cookie sheet. "I got used to having her here, you know? I mean, I ran out of hot water at least twice a week, stepped on her high heels all the time, and had chocolate in my refrigerator for the first time in three years, but still. I liked having her here."

Jason glanced up blandly from the bag of gourmet baked tortilla chips he'd discovered in the pantry. Spinelli had finished all of their barbequed chips so he was stuck with these weird white, green and red things. "So tell her to stay."

Sonny spared him a withering look. "First, I wouldn't _tell _her – I'd ask her. And second, I can't. It's not right. A man my age, a girl her age…people talk enough. There's no room for any of that. And don't eat so many of those – dinner will be ready in half an hour."

He ignored him as usual and crammed another handful into his mouth. "Who cares what people think? If you want her here, tell her to stay. End of story."

"I would _ask _if I thought she'd agree," his partner replied. "But Elizabeth's like me: she's used to her independence. And she's used to having her own place. She loved Penthouse II – still thinks of it as hers."

"I know," Jason muttered dryly. Her presence was still there, all right. But he'd find that damn bug one of these days.

"And she's very…stubborn about her habits," Sonny continued slowly as he slid the crescent rolls into the oven. "And she's picky about the people she's with. She's used to having her own place and she's used to me being across the hall, so in the end, that's what will work best. It took her some time to adjust to staying with me, you know. She wasn't used to having someone else in the house, watching her and telling her to do things."

Jason rolled his eyes and crammed more chips into his mouth, figuring that if he did that, he wouldn't be tempted to make any remarks about spoiled little brats until he had at least finished chewing.

Sonny remembered something that made him laugh. "She was the same way with Nikolas, actually, when the two of them first started going out. She was still figuring out how relationships worked, and she didn't want to talk about it with me because she got embarrassed, so she'd talk about it with Alexis. So Alexis would get embarrassed – because he was her kid nephew, after all – and she'd tell Elizabeth the strangest things, and then Nikolas would get upset because his aunt knew everything about his personal life."

He shook his head and laughed again, not noticing that Jason was trying not to pay attention. "They figured out how to make things work eventually, though. And now they're fine. It just takes time with Elizabeth. She needs to get used to the idea of things. And she's still used to being on her own and all of that. She might move in if I pushed her to, but she wouldn't be too crazy about it."

"I wouldn't be too crazy about what?" Elizabeth asked, poking her head into the kitchen and looking from Sonny to Jason and back again. "Repeat that."

"I was just saying I didn't think you'd be too crazy about the fact that we're having pot roast for dinner," Sonny replied smoothly.

The brunette regarded him warily. "Well, I'm okay with it…as long as it's not anywhere near as dry as it was last time."

Jason looked at Sonny, startled by this culinary lapse, and the mobster smacked a palm down on the counter. "I told you – that was because of an electrical mishap with the oven! I had the wires changed and has anything ever been too dry since?"

Elizabeth shrugged and suspiciously avoided eye contact. "Well…If you _say _so…"

"I do," the older man groused, moving around the island over to Jason, where he snatched the tortilla chips from his lap. "And give me those. You're spoiling your dinner."

"You might want to fill up on those," the brunette whispered loudly. "I'm not sure the roast is going to be on the level."

Jason would have replied had Sonny not chosen that moment to whip his balled up apron at her head. The brunette shrieked and ducked, then volleyed it back at him. Jason sat in the middle of this, idly watching the bundle of cloth sail gaily over his head, and decided that it was probably for the best that he had been rebuffed so soundly the night before. The girl was immature and spoiled, and there was no reason that a guy like him should even think twice about someone like her.

And then she took off the little knit shrug she wore and spread it across the back of a chair, giving him a nice view of her chest in a surprisingly low-cut t-shirt (for her), and Jason immediately changed his mind. Ah, what the hell? That was his prerogative.

"How do you like the furniture I picked out?" Sonny smiled as the brunette began to put her hair up into a high ponytail. The movement of stretching her arms upward enhanced her modest rack, and Jason was a big fan of that.

"I love it," she answered sincerely. "Everything's perfect. I'm going to hopefully start moving in tomorrow, if that's okay."

"Fine, fine," he responded, and Jason could tell that Sonny wasn't anywhere near as eager about the move as Elizabeth was. "Let me know if you need any help."

"I'll grab a couple of the guys and force them to do some hard labor for the day," she winked, taking a few chips out of the bag that had been so abruptly seized from Jason. "Dinner ready yet? I'm starving."

"Almost," Sonny nodded. "Go wash up and grab Spinelli."

"I'll do that," Elizabeth agreed, already heading out of the kitchen. "Nerd stole my monkey butt lamp _again _and I'm going to get it back, then bash him over the head with it."

"Hold on, please," the mobster called after her, and she skidded to a stop. "Let Spinelli know that I'm putting a temporary cap on all challenges until you're all settled in. He's expecting me to hand out the new one tonight, and I don't have it."

"That's fine," the brunette called back, already in the dining room. "A little break should hopefully also break the nerd's winning streak."

* * *

At about noon the next day, Jason decided to stop over at Sonny's penthouse before heading to the warehouse, mainly to go over some of the things he needed to take care of by week's end but also to see how Elizabeth was progressing with the big move.

But he didn't see any signs of the little brunette when he let himself into Penthouse IV. Instead, he saw Sonny sitting on the couch with a file of printouts, most likely from Stan or the boys in Accounting, and a tall glass of water. The air conditioning, as usual, was blaring and Jason absently tugged on the sleeve of his t-shirt, wondering what his neighbors had against fresh air.

"Hey," he nodded at his partner. "Listen, I'm heading over to the warehouse now to talk to Benny about the shipments. I'll stop by and get the information on Tomassino from Stan, too."

"Great," Sonny replied. "I put a rush on it, so he should have it by now. I already have the paperwork from Benny – it's right here, just going through it – and I was going to stop by a give it to you or Spinelli, but things got a little busy around here."

Jason nodded. "That's fine. Saves me some time." He glanced around the seemingly quiet and in order penthouse. "So…she move out yet or what?"

He only meant it partially as a joke, and that was why Jason was so surprised when Sonny nodded casually. "Yeah, almost."

"You're kidding."

The mobster glanced up, confused, and shook his head. "No. She's almost done. Got all the stuff over to Penthouse VI in shifts, and I think she only has to clean out her bathroom and grab her shoes now. Then comes the hard part – unpacking all of it."

"She's already _done_?" Jason still couldn't believe that. "It's only noon. I didn't even hear any-"

Sonny shrugged. "She worked fast. I tried to help, but she knew I had work to do and told me she was fine. Max and the guys helped carry some of the heavier boxes. Elizabeth's not into big productions, Jason. She works quickly and quietly and only takes a break when she's done. She doesn't bother to stop and chat about it in the middle of it."

"Hey, Stone Cold, Mister Corinthos Sir." Spinelli poked his head into the penthouse and looked around. "Cold in here."

"Yeah, I'm thinking about turning down the AC in a bit, opening up some windows," Sonny replied, placing all the printouts back in the folder and standing to hand them off to Jason. "What are you doing here? I thought you had class."

Spinelli shook his head. "The professor cancelled. I'm free for the morning. Hey, is the Dragon still around? I have stuff for her."

"Elizabeth's over in her new penthouse," Sonny explained, jerking his thumb toward the wall that he now shared with his ward. "She's just about done moving all of her stuff over there. Was there something you needed from her?"

"Something I need to _give _her," the boy corrected, holding up a small stack of paperbacks. "She lent me some of her books for Critical Methods and I finished all of them and thought I'd give 'em back."

"Just drop them in the laundry basket," came a voice from behind him, and Spinelli turned around to see Elizabeth come in through the door with a large black basket in her hands. "You done already?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Spinelli replied, setting the books down as she had asked. "Almost done with the move, huh?"

She nodded and moved around him to get to the stairs. "Yup, almost. Just have to get the last of my stuff from the bathroom. Be down in a little while."

Sonny watched her scurry up the steps until she disappeared from sight. "As soon as she leaves, help me open the windows."

Spinelli laughed at that. "You can't stand the AC this low either, huh?"

The mobster shook his head with a beleaguered sigh, making Jason smirk. "It's fine if it's ninety degrees out like it was before, but today's a perfectly nice day…and she still keeps it cold in here."

Spinelli smiled and hopped over the armrest of the little green armchair and sat down, drumming his fingers on the edge of the cushion. "Well, our place is almost always hot and really muggy – I don't think we've used the AC once since we moved in, right, Stone Cold?"

Jason shook his head and leaned against the armchair. "I don't like to."

"I use it moderately," Sonny allowed. "Elizabeth likes it on every day, though. As soon as she's done picking up her things, I'm turning it down."

"Are you whining about the air-conditioning again?" the brunette teased, coming down the stairs with her laundry basket half full of various odds and ends. "Well, you can turn it back to subterranean rainforest conditions again once I'm out of here."

"You sure you got everything?" Sonny asked, peeking into her basket as Jason discreetly did the same, just to see what sort of 'odds and ends' a girl like Elizabeth kept around. "You left your blow dryer in my bathroom two days ago, remember?"

"I got it," she nodded, jiggling the contents of her basket. "I went around to every room and made sure to grab everything that was mine."

"And all your shoes?"

"I took half earlier, and I'll come back for the rest."

This went on for another few minutes as Sonny suggested an item and Elizabeth ran it off her list, and gave Jason some time to check out her possessions. There were a few hairbrushes, an unassuming little pack of menstrual pills, a half-empty bag of cotton balls, a set of Russian nesting dolls, and some hairspray, among other things. Jason frowned and went back to leaning against Spinelli's armchair. He liked to run his hands through a woman's hair and hated it when it was weighed down with hairspray and holding gel and all of that junk.

"Okay, so I'm going to go take care of this stuff," the brunette smiled, tipping her head toward the door. "I'll come back later and do a final run-through, and get my shoes."

"We'd be happy to help if you need it," Sonny volunteered, earning sour looks from Jason and Spinelli. "Just let us know what you need done."

"Well, I might take you up on that," Elizabeth replied slowly, eyeing Jason's arms. "I've got a bunch of boxes full of books that I need to get upstairs."

"I have to go to the warehouse," the enforcer replied quickly, fairly launching himself off the armrest and toward the door. "Work to do."

"I have my next class in an hour," Spinelli hurriedly explained, following suit. "Gotta get my learn on. Later, Mister Corinthos Sir, Dragon. Happy trails."

Elizabeth frowned as she watched the two men retreat. "Nerds."

* * *

He felt bad for refusing to help Elizabeth for the next twenty minutes, and then found himself elbow-deep in work so the guilt was soon forgotten. But it returned later, once things eased up, and by seven o'clock Jason couldn't seem to shake it off.

So he left the warehouse and stopped by Spinelli's favorite new pizzeria on Birch Drive and picked up a large order, then headed back to Harborview. Sonny was out somewhere, judging by the fact that Jason didn't see his favorite car in the garage, so he didn't bother stopping at Penthouse IV first.

Instead, he went over to Penthouse VI, took a deep breath, and knocked.

"It's open!"

She sounded close by, and Jason shifted his grip on the pizza boxes and reached for the knob. "Spinelli wanted to order in and I thought you might want something to…"

He pushed the door open and found himself staring at Elizabeth and about six or seven of his bodyguards. "…eat."

Nine pairs of eyes stared back at him in surprise, and Elizabeth was the first to regain her composure. "Oh, you brought pizza. Yeah, Spinelli was telling me that _Luna Mezzo Mare_ has great food."

"That was nice of you, Boss," Milo ventured, tipping a bottle of beer at Jason. Max, Ritchie, and Johnny nodded. Marco and Trevor just exchanged suspicious glances and kept silent. Stan, however, regarded the situation with open curiosity and just a hint of disdain.

As Jason soon realized, Elizabeth was done with not only her moving ordeal, but also almost all of the unpacking. A stack of empty boxes was piled up in the corner of the room, and there was only one remaining box marked _Books + CDs_ sitting by the foot of the stairs. She had apparently gathered up the guys who had helped her move and they were currently sitting on the floor by the fireplace with empty plates littering the coffee table Sonny had purchased for the new place.

"We actually just ate," the brunette replied slowly, gesturing to the empty plates and the beer bottles all the guards held. "It was a long day so we figured an early dinner was in order. Thank you, though. It was really nice of you and Spinelli to, uh…think of me."

And as if the fact that Jason was actually being nice to her wasn't bewildering enough, Spinelli chose that moment to walk by and poke his head into her new penthouse. "Hey, Dragon. Silent Sentinels."

"Spaghetti," they all replied together, raising their bottles.

The boy grimaced, but his frown soon faded when he noticed what his mentor was holding. "Hey! _Luna Mezzo Mare_! Thanks, Stone Cold! I had no idea you were bringing that – otherwise I wouldn't have made bologna sandwiches. But bologna goes well with pizza, right? It's like double the fun…of meat."

The guards exchanged glances as Elizabeth puzzled over this remark, and they all lifted their bottles to their lips at the same time in order to hide mocking grins that would have instantly had them seeking either new employment or medical attention.

"Get out," Jason ordered, half-shoving Spinelli out the door.

"But I-"

"Move," he interrupted, backing out himself. "And take these."

"Sure, but I don't know what you're so mad about-"

"Just take them and get out of my face-"

Elizabeth arched a brow as the door slammed shut, certain that she'd never be able to figure out Sonny's Lurch of an enforcer.

"See?" she asked her friends, all of whom had fallen suspiciously silent except for the occasional snicker. "Didn't I tell you he was weird?"


	13. Chapter 13

**Hack 13**

Jason Morgan was done.

He was done being nice to Elizabeth, he was done thinking about her in any sort of sexual way, and he was done trying to figure her out. That was it.

She was an annoying, snippy, entitled, possessive little thing that always sent him in circles and deflected everything he asked or said, and he was done putting up with it.

The guards would have had a field day with what had transpired the day Elizabeth moved into her own penthouse had he not run damage control. The next morning at the warehouse he was perfectly aloof and ignored everything they said, so their veiled remarks about the brunette went completely unheard and their suspicion and amusement eventually died down.

Thankfully, he'd been able to avert that mutiny. He knew the older guards – Johnny, Francis, Max – pretty well from before he left and if the younger ones were anything like those three, he would have been in for it had they realized his attraction to Elizabeth. In fact, he never would have heard the end of it. They would have been impossible to control, and he didn't need any of that shit.

So now he was completely done trying to figure her out. She was a selfish little kid and that was that – nothing too complicated there. From now on, he was just going to stick with Sonny, Spinelli, his work, and the few discreet, gorgeous blondes he occasionally met at Jake's.

And that was good enough for him.

* * *

So far, Spinelli had won seven challenges and Elizabeth had won five.

This worried Sonny, who was hoping that there was some way he could rig these contests so that his favorite could come out ahead. He had no doubt that Elizabeth was the better hacker: she understood the intricacies of the computer language as well as the big picture that allowed her programs to fit together and function with the utmost efficiency. The only reason she lost two of those challenges was because she was a more careful coder than Spinelli…although Jason would have said it was because she was slower.

This latest tally worried Elizabeth, too, though not in the same way. She hated being behind the little nerd mostly because the fact just corroborated his chauvinistic mindset: boys were better hackers than girls. And she absolutely hated that she was allowing him that win. If she won all the challenges and got the position and then wanted to take the next few years off and travel through Europe by herself, she'd have no problem whatsoever leaving the job to Spinelli because in that case, she would have already made her point: having ovaries didn't impede the progress of any other body organ.

But she was also just stressed out in general. She had moved into her new place, which was great, but she kind of missed Sonny. She had never lived with him before these past few weeks, and even though it took her some time to adjust in the beginning, she found that she liked it. She liked having someone who would wake her up on time every morning, and who would make a wonderful breakfast for her day in and day out, and who would pack her a bag lunch if she needed it, and who would make sure she went to bed on a full stomach. She liked the structure and stability of living with Sonny and having someone to talk to who listened to her, cared about her, advised her, and also cooked for her whenever her stomach so much as grumbled. Plus, she just liked being close to him.

And so to her surprise, whereas before she had to adjust to living _with _someone, she now had to adjust again to living _without _someone. And as if that wasn't bad enough, she had recently gotten into a huge fight with Nikolas. She had no idea what it was about, even – that was how inconsequential it was. But still, he was one of her best friends and he knew absolutely everything about her and vice versa, and it just sucked that they weren't talking right now.

Plus, Stan was working on a new gadget with the boys in the tech department and was in full on development mode, so he was effectively hermetically sealed in the basement lab at the warehouse. Her favorite guards had their shifts and were doing extra work for Sonny and Jason, so she didn't even have them. She was busy, all of her friends were busy, Sonny was busy, and it just seemed like she went from sunrise to sunset every single day without even getting to hang out for fifteen minutes with someone she genuinely liked.

And of course, there was always the thing with Spinelli. The nerd was getting more and more annoying every single day. She had no idea how he did it: he probably laid awake at night, dreaming of ways to push her over the edge. He taunted her about being in the lead, he did his best to gang up on her and would try to get his mentor in on the fun, and he was always stealing her damn monkey lamp. She knew he thought it was all in good fun – after all, they _had _agreed that it was business, not personal – but it sure wasn't any fun for her.

So as far as pity parties went, this one was complete with noisemakers and a goddamn clown.

She took a deep breath but didn't get up from the couch, seeing nothing more worthwhile in the doing than just laying on her back and listening to her music, as she was now. Sonny and Jason were once again out of town, visiting with an associate in nearby Pine Valley, and would be returning late that night. Another storm system was moving through the area and the night skies were dark and clouded. Fortunately, the thunderstorm wasn't as bad as the last one when the power went out, so she wasn't too worried. Hopefully, Spinelli wouldn't be coming around this time trying to hide behind her skirt again.

Another hour, however, proved no such luck.

She groaned when she heard a knock on the door. "Go away."

Instead of doing that, the visitor twisted the knob and poked his head in. "Greetings, Dragon."

Elizabeth threw a pillow harmlessly at the wall by his head. "Didn't I tell you to go away?"

He shrugged and entered, closing the door softly behind him. "I don't like thunderstorms. It's really quiet across the hall, so I thought I'd see what you were doing."

Really, how could she kick him out when he mentioned not liking thunderstorms?

Elizabeth groggily swung her legs off the couch and pulled her earbud headphones out. "I'm not doing anything. Or, I _wasn't _doing anything until you came along."

"Why do you have candles out?" Spinelli asked, gazing around her main room.

"I like turning off the lights and pulling out the candles during storms," she answered. "I like the way they make the room look."

"It looks like the night of that really bad storm," he pointed out, making his way over to the couch. "Remember? You made me food."

"I remember," she muttered, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. "What do you want, Spinelli?"

He shrugged again. "I just wanted to know if you were up for doing anything."

"I was going to go to bed in a little while," she replied, gesturing to her pajamas. "Though I don't know why – I've been so stressed out and cranky lately that I just lay there for hours without being able to sleep."

"You should try to drink some milk or eat some oatmeal before bed," he advised. "That's what Stone Cold used to make me do when we had important things to take care of in the morning and I was too wired to sleep."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Hey," Spinelli spoke up suddenly, looking around at the candles, the dim lighting, the storm, and her pajamas. "I just realized something. You're stressed out, and I'm ridiculously bored - I know _exactly _what we can do to remedy our unfortunate situations."

His next words had Elizabeth's eyes widening in surprise and disgust.

"How about a little afternoon delight?"

A proposition?

Oh, that settled it – nerd was going to big fat _die_.

* * *

_An hour later…_

Elizabeth gazed at the light curls of smoke as they floated up to the ceiling. "I don't know why we…didn't think of this before."

"I'm amazed at how you…took to it so quickly," Spinelli called out lazily. He was currently sprawled out on his back with his feet up on the coffee table. At the sound of her voice, he decided to sit up. "Sometimes people…take a little time to get used to the…feeling."

"Are you kidding?" she asked, almost smacking him in the face with a wave of her hand. "I haven't felt this good in weeks. What's…this stuff called?"

"Afternoon Dee-lite," he answered. "It's my favorite kind. It has a slowing effect on…people."

"A…slowing effect, huh?" she giggled and clapped her hand over her mouth. "I love…it."

"I did this once right before I played _Mask of Death: Curse…of the Samurai_," Spinelli admitted. "It totally killed my…score."

"I love that game," Elizabeth admitted, despite her promise to herself that she would never reveal her carefully hidden love of video games to anyone even in cases of extreme duress. "That's the one with Jade. He's the character I always play."

"I love Chun-Li," the boy told her with a loopy smile. "I would _totally _do her."

She pulled a face. "Dude, she's a fictional..."

"She's smoking hot..."

"…character."

"…is what she is."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "Whatever. She's only…16-bit."

"See, now you're trying to be all…logical with…me," he drawled. "And that don't fly…_for a white guy_."

Elizabeth chortled at that. "That's not how the song goes."

"I don't care," Spinelli retorted. "Do you have any candy? I can't stop…thinking about candy."

"It's in the bowl on the table," she replied, passing him a Hershey's mini. "I think these are from last…Halloween."

"I went trick-or-treating once, when Stone Cold and I were in…Germany. I was a street kid and Stone Cold was a Cold Stone. I mean, a Stone…Cold. I got tons of candy corn. If you put an infinite amount…of candy corn in front of me, I would eat it until I died." Serious green eyes probed hers. "Do you understand that?"

She tilted her head and regarded him curiously. "My life decision for the day: I want to be a Gummi…Bear."

"Commendable," Spinelli allowed, slowly – very slowly – pulling out another joint and his favorite neon blue lighter. "Up for another?"

"You first," Elizabeth answered, waving for him to take his time. "Man, this is fun. We should do this more…often. Hey! I know! Let's count our molecules."

"Yeah," the boy cheered, passing her the joint. As she took a puff, he held up his hand and stared intently. "I've always wanted to know how many…molecules I had. Wow, look at all…those molecules. I bet I have…more molecules than…you."

"You do…not," she countered, holding her own hand up to her face. "Let's see. One…two…three…four…five…"

"…eight…nine…ten…eleven…twelve…" He scratched his head and peeked up at her over his fingers. "Shoot. I can't remember what comes after…twelve. I knew it this morning, I swear I…did."

"It's thirteen," Elizabeth replied sagely. "But now you made me lose count. I have to start again. One…two…three…"

This continued until Elizabeth and Spinelli discovered that they had thirty-one and six molecules in their hands, respectively. They then decided that it would be a good idea to open the balcony doors in case Sonny and Jason decided to stop by Penthouse VI on their way back to their own suites.

It took them about twenty-nine minutes to figure out that this was a possibility.

It took them an additional thirteen to figure out a course of action.

By the time they had walked over to the doors, unlocked them, opened them, and walked back over to their cushions on the floor, another eleven minutes had passed. Afternoon Dee-lite had quite a slowing effect on…people, after all.

* * *

"What a night," Sonny groused as he brushed the water off his raincoat. Next to him, Jason was vigorously rubbing his hand through his hair in an attempt to dry off as well. "I guess the ex-Vice President is right about all that global warming stuff, huh? All these storms…"

He ran a hand over his carefully brushed hair and nodded at Max as they stepped off the elevator. "Hey. Any problems tonight?"

"Not a one, Boss."

"How're the kids?"

The bodyguard shrugged. "Saw Spaghetti about two hours ago – he went over to Toothpick's. Haven't heard a peep out of them since."

"That can't be good," Sonny murmured, sharing a wry look with Jason. "We'd better go check on them."

"How much trouble could they have gotten into?" the enforcer scoffed as they walked down the hall to Penthouse VI. "We were only gone for a few hours."

"Sometimes, that's all it takes."

Jason frowned at the back of his best friend's head. "And how do you know that?"

Sonny shrugged. "That's what the parenting book said. Here we go – Elizabeth? You in there, sweetheart?"

He knocked twice on the door and then reached for the knob without waiting for an answer. "Maybe she made Spinelli dinner again. Good thing, too – the kid's looking thin these days and…"

He trailed off as the door to Penthouse VI swung open, revealing Spinelli and Elizabeth seated on the floor atop matching pink cushions. Jason, confused, moved closer so that he could see what was going on. At first, nothing really seemed out of the ordinary: the kids were just sitting on the floor and talking. And then he noticed the light smoke that filtered out the balcony doors, and the white thing in Spinelli's hand…

"You know, they're called fingers," Elizabeth mused, still not realizing that they had an audience as she stared at her hand. "But I've never seen them fing."

She wiggled her digits, flexing her hand, and her sapphire eyes lit up. "Oh. There they go!"

"ELIZABETH IMOGENE-"

The brunette spun around, nearly toppling over at the sudden movement, and her mouth fell open when she saw her enraged guardian. "Uh-oh."

"Spinelli, what the hell do you think you're doing?!"

Jason pushed roughly past Sonny and made a beeline for his ward, who was too high to have the sense to run. He dropped to one knee and yanked the joint from his hand, holding it above his head when Spinelli tried to reach for it. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Disgusted, Jason resisted Spinelli's puppy-dog look and headed for the first floor powder room to flush the evidence way.

"Wait! There's still good pot left in that-" Spinelli tried to explain, reaching after Jason before Sonny grabbed him by the shirt and pushed him backwards onto the couch.

"Don't make this any worse than it already is," he ground out, pointing a finger directly at Spinelli's face. The boy kept his eye on the warning digit, causing him to appear cross-eyed. That made Elizabeth laugh, and the young woman had dissolved into giggles by the time Jason returning, wiping his hands on his jeans as if the joint had stained them as well.

"I don't know why you're so…upset," she laughed, looking lazily back and forth between Sonny and Jason. "You run…worse stuff through your own…turf. What? I know…things."

"No, you don't," Sonny replied firmly, helping her to her feet and gently sitting her down on the couch. "My God, she's completely baked. Damn it, I can't believe you had the _gall _to bring that crap into my house-"

"I'll take it from here," Jason interrupted, grabbing Spinelli by the lapels and hauling him to his feet. "Get up. Let's go. Fuck's the matter with you? Walk!"

"Afternoon Dee-lite has a slowing effect on…people," Elizabeth supplied helpfully as Jason stomped by, dragging Spinelli out.

"Great," Sonny bit off, pinching the bridge of his nose as his best friend and the boy left the apartment. "Just fucking great."

"You shouldn't swear," she responded politely. "We should all try to cut back. It's not nice."

"Neither is smoking pot." He scrubbed a hand over his face and took a seat next to her. This was the first time she had done something like this, and Sonny had absolutely no idea how he was supposed to proceed from here. As angry as he was, it wouldn't do any good to take it out on her. "Elizabeth, what happened?"

"I did it," she confessed glumly, throwing her hands – slowly – up in the air. "I did it. I…agreed to do the weed. I smoked it like…a cigarette."

Sonny brushed her hair behind her ears and settled her back against the cushions. "Why'd you do it, sweetheart? You know all about drugs, and how bad they are for you."

Oh, the irony here was just _rich_. He'd have to remember to laugh about it sometime when he wasn't so pissed off.

"Because Spinelli said that I was stressed and he…was bored and that he had…just the thing," she replied honestly. "And it was…fun. I'm not stressed any…more. They should…sell this stuff. They'd make a killing with…it."

Sonny swore under his breath and abruptly stood. "Stay here," he ordered gently, wagging a finger in her face and withdrawing it as soon as he saw her start to go cross-eyed. "I don't need you walking around like this. Just…stay here."

She giggled and clapped a hand over her mouth. "You're…slow, too."

"Yes, sweetheart, I'm slow, too," he grumbled, stomping out into the hall and heading straight for Jason's penthouse. The door was shut but he flung it open and barged in, his gaze immediately falling on his best friend's back.

"I'm only going to say this once," he got out sternly, hands planted now on his hips. Jason turned at the sound of his voice and stared at him. "I don't want Spinelli around Elizabeth anymore."

"I brushed my teeth…Stone Cold!" they heard the boy call from the upstairs bathroom. "Can I please have some food _now_?"

Jason closed his eyes. "Brush them again, wash your face, and flush the rest of your stash. I'm searching your room in twenty minutes. I'll bring a damn dog if I have to!"

He shook his head and turned his attention back to Sonny. "What?"

"I don't want Spinelli around Elizabeth anymore," Sonny replied firmly. "I thought it was fine, but Spinelli's made it very clear that he can't be trusted around her. I don't want him around her at all, starting now."

"Hold on," Jason stopped him, holding up a hand and frowning at his friend. "This isn't just Spinelli's fault, you know. She didn't have to smoke it."

"He brought that shit into my house and offered-"

"And she accepted," Jason finished. "He's smoked that stuff on his own plenty of times before I caught him and made him turn it over – he wasn't hurting anyone. He didn't put Elizabeth behind the wheel, or get behind it himself. He didn't go anywhere. He didn't talk to anyone else. He was just sitting in the penthouse. It was a bad choice and he should have known better than to share it with her, fine. But he's not the only one at fault here."

"It was his own personal stash, his doing," Sonny shot back. "He's not welcome in her penthouse anymore. I don't need this happening again."

"She's not innocent in this," the enforcer repeated hotly as Spinelli came slowly down the stairs, taking one every twenty seconds. "You can't pretend she is! She didn't have to say yes and smoke it."

"I don't care!" Sonny's eyes were blazing and he knew that he was being irrational, but that wasn't of much importance to him at the moment. "Your kid's a bad influence on mine! That's all there is to it."

Jason balled his hands into fists but kept his distance, barely noticing that Elizabeth had poked her head into the penthouse. "You've gotta be shitting me. She's not a kid – even though you treat her like one. And Spinelli isn't a bad influence on anyone!"

The brunette moved to Sonny's side and gently tapped him on the arm, once every second, like clockwork. Jason stared at her and she stared back, but Sonny was on a roll. "I don't treat Elizabeth like a kid – I know she's not! But she's never once touched drugs in all the time she's stayed with me, until you brought Spinelli over here and-"

"In my…defense, Mister Corinthos-"

"Shut up!" he snapped, still glaring at Jason. "Never _once _has Elizabeth touched drugs until you brought him here. Now what's that supposed to tell me? She's fine before, you bring him to Port Charles, boom, she's a dope fiend. Pretty soon she's developed a taste for it, then a bad habit, then a total dependency, and she's out on the streets selling her shoes for a good score and falling in with crack dealers and then she's kissing any chance of a respectable – _What _do you _want_?"

This last question was directed at Elizabeth, who was staring at Jason with wide eyes while continuing to poke Sonny in the arm every second in perfect rhythm. She heard his question but didn't turn her face to look at Sonny; instead, she remained staring at Jason, who was staring back at her with a confused look.

"Have his eyes _always _been that blue?"

Sonny frowned as Jason's brows jumped. "What? I don't know – I don't care. What do you want? I thought I told you to stay put."

"But they're so _blue_," she drawled, tilting her head to the side and staring with unabashed wonder. "How come no one told me? How does he _get _them…like that?"

"It's magic," Sonny grumbled, taking her elbow and leading her to the door. "You shouldn't be out like this-"

"But I'm hungry," Elizabeth replied, finally remembering what she had wanted to say before Jason's eyes distracted her. "I can't stop thinking about potato chips. Do you have any?"

"I don't keep potato chips, you know that," he reminded her gently but sternly. "The starch in them sticks to your teeth and causes gingivitis."

"But I'm hungry," she repeated, patting her tummy for good measure. "And I want potato chips."

"We have…potato chips," Spinelli announced. "Barbequed potato chips. I'll go get them."

It took him ten seconds to turn around and take one step, and Jason rolled his eyes at the lingering effects of the cannabis. Grabbing Spinelli by the shoulders, he steered the boy onto the couch and gave him a light shove that sent him facedown into the cushions.

"You stay – I'll get them."

"And orange soda, too…Stone Cold," the boy called out, his voice muffled in the cushions. Elizabeth slowly made her way over to the couch, as Sonny scrubbed a hand over his face, and took a seat next to him as Spinelli went about righting himself.

"Orange soda with barbequed…chips sounds really good."

"It…is."

"I don't think this is a good idea," Sonny started just as Jason came out of the kitchen holding the desired chips. "We should probably go home. Elizabeth, you've had enough excitement for-"

"Potato…chips! Potato…chips!" Spinelli and Elizabeth chanted in perfect rhythm, eagerly reaching for the bags and glass bottles that Jason held. "Yay!"

"Sweetheart, you can eat that at home," the mobster informed her gently, waving his hand for a curious Max to stop staring and enter the penthouse. "We have to go. I want you to stay with me tonight so that I can keep an eye on you, okay?"

"M'kay," she got out around a mouth of chips that had finally made it to her mouth. "But I can't…walk and eat at the same…time."

"Max, please? She's a little slow tonight."

Max frowned at that. "Well, Boss, I understand that it was a dumb thing to do, but I don't think it's right to call her-"

Sonny scratched his chin and gave him a bland, weary look. "I mean that literally, Max. It seems that this brand of cannabis has a slowing effect on…people. If you could?"

"You got it, Boss," the guard nodded, squeezing past Jason's coffee table until he was towering over the petite brunette. "Come on, Toothpick. Up we go."

He lifted her easily, pausing so that she could rearrange her chips and her soda, and headed for the door.

"Bye, Jason!" Elizabeth sang out, executing a slow-motion wave. "You stay blue."

Spinelli laughed at that and stuffed another handful of chips in his mouth. "Ha! Like he has…a choice. That's stupid. You're a stupid Dragon."

Sonny glared at Jason and waited until Max was out in the hall. "Remember what I said," he bit off before turning on his heel and storming out of Penthouse II, making sure to slam the door on his way out.

Eight seconds passed before Spinelli jumped at the resounding clatter of the door in its frame.

* * *

He had fed Spinelli, made him change out of his smoke-filled clothes, searched his room for any remaining weed (and found some tucked under a loose floorboard), and put the kid to sleep. Then Jason had flushed everything, disinfected the toilet and the entire bathroom, and tied the clothes up in a garbage bag and sent them to the twenty-four hour Laundromat.

It had been a long night, and what kept him going was his anger over Sonny's accusation of Spinelli's total culpability in this situation. He knew Spinelli was a little misunderstood, and that he made questionable decisions sometimes, but he was a good kid and a loyal kid, and Jason knew he'd have been hard pressed to find anyone as trusting and faithful and helpful as Damien Spinelli.

Just because Elizabeth had been stupid enough to accept the weed didn't mean that Spinelli was some sort of quasi-dealer bent on leading other kids like himself down a path of ruin and damnation, or whatever shit Sonny was spewing.

But Spinelli had mumbled something about the girl being uncommonly stressed out, which made Jason wonder. What did Elizabeth have to be stressed out about? The brat was leading a charmed life. She was the right-hand girl to Sonny Corinthos – God, he hated saying that, even thinking it – and she handled all of his problems and made them go away. What did she have to complain about?

As soon as the night guard left with the clothes, Jason made plans to turn in. Spinelli was already snoring in his bedroom by the time he checked on him again, and everything was taken care of. So Jason showered again – just in case he smelled like the damn stuff by association – and brushed his teeth and shucked his clothes and turned off the light and got into bed.

…And then he couldn't stop thinking about what Elizabeth had said about his eyes.

That fact alone was enough to refuel his anger from before and it was a while before he was able to fall asleep. So much for being done with the girl.


	14. Chapter 14

**Hack 14**

A day later, Jason was much calmer about the whole situation. Thankfully, so was Sonny. When he dropped by Penthouse IV, he found the mobster restocking his wet bar. Sonny looked up warily when Jason entered, but nodded for him to come on in anyway. When he saw that Jason wasn't there to continue their argument, he appeared to relax as well.

"Hey."

Sonny nodded again and finished polishing his barware. "Hey."

Jason glanced up toward the stairs and tucked his thumbs into his belt loops. "Elizabeth feeling all right?"

He nodded. "She's okay. Not too worse for the wear. Ate her whole breakfast this morning, plus mine. That was the only strange thing."

Sonny paused, and then braved a glance at his friend. "How's Spinelli?"

"Sleeping," Jason shrugged. "I took away his computer and his video games, so he has nothing better to do."

The mobster nodded knowingly and was on the verge of saying something when his friend did something uncharacteristic and interrupted him. "Listen, sorry about getting her involved in that. I know you're…protective of her and Spinelli should have known better. I try to keep an eye on him but he's a grown kid and sometimes there's not much I can do. I should have warned him off her earlier."

Sonny waved a hand at him and shook his head. "I overreacted. Spinelli didn't think he was hurting anyone – actually, he thought he was helping. Elizabeth's been a little on edge recently, and we all thought it was because of…you know. So we didn't really bring it up."

It took Jason a little while to realize that Sonny was referring to the key biological occurrence that separated Elizabeth from almost all the other members of the Corinthos-Morgan organization. "Yeah."

"But she was actually stressed out," Sonny continued, "and none of us picked up on it. At least Spinelli listened and tried to help. It wasn't all his fault; she was there and shares the blame, too."

Jason nodded. "It was just a bad choice on both their parts. I've already talked to Spinelli about it and it shouldn't happen again. At least…not with Elizabeth. That's the best I can promise."

Sonny had to smile at that. "Yeah, I understand."

"He's not a bad kid," he felt compelled to argue. "He's not. He's harmless – all he wants to do is help out. Sometimes he messes things up, but he does it from a good place. I know him real well, Sonny, and I know what he's about."

His best friend was nodding slowly. "And that's why you got so angry with me when I said he was a bad influence."

Jason crossed his arms over his chest. "He's not like most people. Whatever he is, he is on the surface. He doesn't hide anything. He's not into hurting people – he's not trying to corrupt Elizabeth, especially since he knows that she's important to you. All he wants to do is help you and me out. He's really just that simple. And because of that, I'll always support him and I'll always fight for him…even against you."

Sonny let out a long sigh and twiddled his thumbs, the corner of his mouth hooking up slightly as he regarded his best friend. "Damien Spinelli is going to be in my life for a long time, huh?"

The enforcer arched a sandy brow. "Yeah, he is."

Sonny chuckled to himself. "Fair enough. If he's that important to you, then he's that important to me. I'll try to remember what you said just now if I ever have another problem with him."

"You won't," Jason told him. "He doesn't want to create any problems for you or with you. Or Elizabeth. He understands that he can't involve her in that sort of thing, I made sure of it."

"Thank you," Sonny replied sincerely. "For what it's worth, I talked to Elizabeth about it, too, and made it very clear where I stand on this thing. Then I grounded her."

The enforcer frowned and regarded Sonny from under furrowed brows. "You grounded her?"

He nodded proudly. "I did. I really laid down the law."

Jason gestured hesitantly toward the door. "…I just saw her heading out with Stan. They said they were going to go shoot pool at Jake's or something."

Sonny closed his eyes. "I've really got to figure out how this punishment business works."

* * *

They had church the next morning, and Jason and Spinelli showed up at Penthouse IV in their usual matching Sunday suits, except that Spinelli wore a tie and Jason refused to button the top two buttons of his shirt. Sonny was almost ready and before long, the three were on their way. Father Coates gave a sermon on tolerance and understanding that the three men enjoyed as much as they could enjoy any sermon.

They returned to Harborview Towers famished and ready to eat, having only had a quick bowl of cereal (the Devil's food!) at Sonny's before leaving. The men changed quickly and made plans to head to the No Name, and Sonny asked Jason to stop by Penthouse VI and invite Elizabeth along while he returned a business call.

So Jason found himself at Penthouse VI once more. He almost just turned the knob and entered until he remembered that this wasn't Sonny's and she was a _girl_, after all, so Jason raised his hand and rapped his knuckles against the door.

"Open!"

She sounded nearby – again – but this time Jason was more cautious in entering. He wasn't going to say something stupid only to find out that the whole exchange was on display for the gun-toting peanut gallery from down at the warehouse.

So he kept his mouth shut, opened the door, and poked his head in. Elizabeth, who was seated on the couch reading the morning paper, stared back at him curiously. Her questioning look made him feel like an idiot and Jason stepped into the penthouse and shut the door behind him, convinced that there was no one else around that he could be made to look foolish in front of.

"Eat your crackers and wine like a good little boy?"

He ignored the remark and folded his arms over his chest. "We're going to the No Name for breakfast and Sonny wanted to know if you were coming along."

Elizabeth lowered the paper and appeared to consider it. "Well, I would, but I don't think I'd feel right-"

"Coffee, coffee, need coffee five minutes ago," came a voice from the stairwell, and Jason and Elizabeth both looked up as Nikolas hurriedly descended the steps, clad only in a pair of black silk pajama bottoms.

Jason's eyes widened in thinly-veiled horror as his old friend scrubbed a hand through his mussed and tousled hair, and Elizabeth smiled.

"Morning. I thought you were going to sleep all day and miss that big, scary meeting of yours."

Nikolas smiled at that, then spotted Jason standing, frozen in place, by the door. "Oh, hey, man. I didn't expect to see you so bright and early. Do we have coffee? I'm going to fall asleep in the shower if I don't have some, and soon."

Elizabeth tossed the paper onto the cushion and stood, straightening the little white camisole she wore under a short denim jacket. Jason's narrowed eyes followed her as she headed to the dining table to deposit her own empty Hello Kitty mug.

"It's right here, babe," she replied, handing Nikolas a steaming mug. The Prince accepted it gratefully and inhaled, gently smacking the side of her narrow waist as she passed.

"Thanks," he murmured against the cup, closing his eyes as the Columbian Roast warmed its way through his chest. "You know just how I like it."

"Yeah, brewed to hell and back with no sugar," Elizabeth retorted, playfully smacking his bare chest and moving out of the way before he could grab her. "Disgusting. That stuff's practically toxic waste."

"Yeah, yeah," the Prince groused, rolling his eyes at her. "I'm well aware of how you feel about my coffee preferences, Elizabeth."

Jason watched this exchange in stony silence, having yet to move from his post by the door. He remembered Sonny telling him about when Elizabeth and Nikolas _used _to go out, and Nikolas himself telling him about how she was in bed, but they both made it sound like that was a thing of the past.

Clearly, that wasn't the case.

The facts were glaring: Nikolas had spent the night at Penthouse VI, was still there having coffee that Elizabeth brewed _just the way he liked it_, and was going to shower because _obviously_, something had transpired earlier that necessitated a shower.

Had Jason known that the whole situation was purely innocent, and that Nikolas was only staying at Harborview because he had business on the mainland and hadn't wanted to take the launch back the night before, he would have felt like an idiot.

As it was, however, he still felt like an idiot.

It was absolutely ridiculous that he was as preoccupied as he was with this _girl _– who really was not his type by any means – and that he was routinely making a fool of himself in her name in front of his subordinates and that he was wasting time trying to work her over when it was very clear that Nikolas was already there.

Son of a bitch.

"I'm sorry, how rude of me." The Prince raised his mug in way of a question. "Would you like some coffee, Jason?"

What he would have liked was to sock Nikolas right on his fucking royal nose.

Instead, Jason just shook his head. "No."

"Breakfast?" his friend continued, completely oblivious to the enforcer's displeasure. "We have breakfast, right, Elizabeth?"

"In the kitchen," she replied, laughing when Nikolas made a playful grab for her waist.

"Is she the best, or what?" he asked, arching a dark brow at Jason. He gave Elizabeth a light smack on the bottom, having already pulled her to him, and she returned the gesture with a light shove. "Listen, I'd love to stay, but I should shower and dress. I've got to meet Uncle at General Hospital in forty-five minutes. Thank you, darling."

He kissed Elizabeth quickly on the mouth and set his mug down on the table. "And I'm sorry if I…interrupted anything here."

"Oh, it was nothing," the brunette scoffed, drawing Jason's dark glare. "Jason was just here to ask if I was going out to breakfast with him, Sonny, and the nerd. Thanks, Jason, but it's alright. You guys go on ahead."

"What?" Nikolas looked back and forth between the two. "Why? On my account? Elizabeth, don't bother yourself with me – go, go. I'll be fine."

"Are you sure?" she asked hesitantly. "I don't think-"

"I'll be just fine," he repeated, and Jason frowned when he patted her arm affectionately. "What do you need to stay for? I already know where you keep everything – I'll be fine. Go, have breakfast with Sonny, and say hello to him for me. I'll be out of here in half an hour, anyway."

Nikolas turned to Jason and beamed, pleased that the whole matter was taken care of. "I have to be back at Wyndemere after the meeting – I'm expecting a conference call from Greece – but the next time I'm on the mainland, we'll go to Jake's. Take care, Jason."

Oh, he'd like to take care of _him_, all right. He'd give him a good pounding, and _then _they could go back to being friends. That seemed like the way to do it.

"Thanks again, babe," he smiled at Elizabeth, leaning down to kiss her cheek. "I'll see you."

They watched as he hurried up the stairs, and it was only when he was gone that Elizabeth turned back to Jason. "Sweet," she shrugged, moving past him toward the coffee table. "Let me grab my purse and we can go."

Jason grumbled something under his breath and left the penthouse before she could even locate her handbag.

* * *

For the life of her, Elizabeth just could not figure Jason Morgan out.

The guy was a real piece of work, and even though she had admittedly never tried too hard to walk a mile in his shoes or get to know him, she had the distinct feeling now that such a thing was not even possible.

He ran hot and cold on her all the time, and it was driving her insane.

He had been angry when she and Spinelli had been discovered lighting up, but that had been directed more at her dopey male counterpart. In fact, Jason had seemed righteously upset on her account. It was almost charming. And she had a vague memory of telling him that he was hot or that his eyes were beautiful or something of that sentiment, and she remembered him looking very receptive to that.

He had been nice the day after. They had run into each other when she and Stan were heading out to Jake's, and he had actually stopped to say hi and ask her how she was feeling. She had definitely picked up on some unease, though, because he kept glancing at Stan and his eyes kept darting around, and he practically fled after excusing himself, but that was all right. A little weird, but what else was new?

And then two days ago he'd walked into her penthouse after mass and then clammed up during the invite. It was super rude, too, because she had company over at the time. She had no idea why Jason had acted that way, especially since Nikolas was a friend of his longer than he had been a friend of hers.

And that was when Elizabeth had a truly bizarre thought, so ridiculous and unlikely that it made sense in a weird, twisted, perverse way. Jason hadn't liked Nikolas being there…with her…half-dressed…early in the morning.

It was protective and territorial of him, if true, and unlike with Sonny, Elizabeth couldn't tolerate that. Her guardian was different, and she could put up with it when he got protective of her. After all, he had had to practically reteach her how to tie to her shoes, and he had helped her through an extensive recovery process after the accident – he got to be protective.

But who was Jason to do the same? He'd known her for a period of weeks and, what? He thought he got to piss in a circle around her and mark her off as property of the Corinthos-Morgan organization?

Um, no.

But in retrospect, she could kind of, sort of, maybe see where he was coming from. This was kind of new to him, and he had probably gotten used to thinking of her as the sturdy, ever-present presence at the fringes (ha!) of the organization he ran with his partner. He got used to thinking of her like…furniture. Or maybe a nice lamp. And he didn't like seeing anyone else crowding her.

That was entirely stupid, yes, but experience taught her that that was just how men were. Johnny and Max had gotten pissy with Nikolas back when the two of them first started hooking up, and it took Elizabeth quite a while to ease the tensions there.

And maybe she should have just been a little more sensitive to his feelings. Maybe it was up to her to start that trend. After all, Sonny was used to her and Nikolas by now. They were a very physical pair – in fact, that physical aspect was how their relationship pretty much started. They basically hooked up whenever they felt like it and found it a great way to release stress and have some fun, and it was something they fell back on now and then. The whole friends-with-benefits deal was working fine for them, and neither one was interested in fixing something that wasn't broken.

Jason, however, was probably a more traditional type. After all, he was masquerading as the good little Catholic boy, so he probably had some feelings on the whole premarital sex issue. She'd never even seen him bring a girl home to Penthouse II – thank God, because that was her place and she didn't need some floozy stinking it up for her eventual triumphant return – nor had she ever heard anything about it from the guards or Spinelli.

So seeing Nikolas in his black silk pajama bottoms – and, really, that was surprisingly conservative in terms of what the Prince preferred to sleep in, which was nothing – and watching the two of them horse around had probably made Jason uncomfortable. Those prudish types hardly liked that sort of thing.

It didn't really matter that nothing had happened between her and Nikolas that night. They had both been too tired, even though Nikolas made a valiant attempt because no red-blooded man could live with himself if he pleaded fatigue in the face of possibly getting laid. None of that really mattered because Jason had seen what he had seen and assumed, and that offended his delicate sensibilities.

Honestly.

So he had been surly throughout lunch and generally grunted at whatever Sonny and Spinelli had to say to him, and he had been ignoring her ever since. She never saw him in the hallway or the lobby anymore, he always came a few minutes late to dinner and didn't stay too long after dessert, and he basically just went about his own work

And for reasons she couldn't explain, that lack of personal contact bothered Elizabeth. She had grown used to nettling the guy, and found her life a little boring without him there to rib.

But that didn't matter, because Jason was an unpredictable, sullen, possessive, territorial, brooding little girl that was an absolute pain to be around and they had less than nothing in common.

So that was that.

* * *

He was a free man, and it felt damn good, too.

Enough was enough. He was a grown man, after all, with needs and goals of his own, and he didn't need to waste his valuable time following a little girl around. She was too young for him, anyway, and too loud. They didn't share any of the same interests – unless they counted Sonny as an interest, and he wasn't about to do that because people talked enough as it was – and they didn't have anything in common personality-wise.

She was stubborn, fierce, rude, guarded, defensive, territorial, suspicious, and a general pain to be around. They were absolutely nothing alike. What had he been so interested in, after all? Just her body, and the fact that she was reputed to be quite a 'wildcat' in bed. And in truth, she wasn't even _that _hot. She was short, and little, and the delicate-looking sort. He had always preferred taller, sturdier blondes with a little something more to grab onto up there.

So this was good. This irritation was cleansing, and he'd forget about the perverse hold she had on him in no time.

And in retrospect, Jason realized that he had overreacted to finding Nikolas in Elizabeth's penthouse. Nikolas wasn't at fault; he was the same genuinely caring, solid, trustworthy man he'd always been. And he had no idea whatsoever that Jason was attracted to Elizabeth. If he was scoring, then good for him. He could clearly handle the little woman, so more fucking power to him.

And clearly, that was the case.

With a sigh, Jason dropped his cue on the table and looked around the room. A couple of the guards were hanging out by the busted jukebox and talking over a few pitchers of beer. Way across the room, Spinelli was at the bar counter talking to Coleman. Jason knew that the bartender wouldn't serve an underage kid, so he wasn't worried. Spinelli was negotiating a rum and coke; Coleman would slip him a Pepsi with extra lemon. No worries.

Movement by the door caught his attention, and Jason looked over to see one of his favorite acquaintances, a tall, curly-haired blonde named Portia that he'd met a week ago, standing by the stairs. She surveyed the room, smirked when her eyes met his for the briefest of moments, and sauntered toward the stairs, her hips issuing an unmistakable invitation.

Jason smiled to himself and picked up the cue, tacking it back onto the wall. This was why he loved Jake's so very much – the excellent company it afforded.

Across the room, however, Spinelli could not say the same. The boy had gotten up to join a couple of the bodyguards that he recognized when he bumped into one of the Corinthos-Morgan organization's new hires that he had ironically back-checked.

Logan Hayes worked at the warehouse and was just another street grunt, and unfortunately for him had no idea what the revered Jason Morgan's associate Damien Spinelli looked like. Because of this, he had absolutely no qualms about picking a drunken fight with the supposed random loser that bumped into him and made him spill his beer.

"Fuck's the matter with you, asshole?" he demanded, giving Spinelli a shove that sent him stumbling back two steps. "Why don't you watch where the hell you're stepping? What's a little pussy like you doing here, anyway?"

He smacked Spinelli upside the head, a blow that the boy was able to only lightly deflect, and Jason's jaw tightened. He was just about to stomp over there and grab the half-drunk punk when Elizabeth, who also happened to be there, made herself visible for the first time when she stepped out of the bathroom.

She spotted Logan shoving Spinelli, and her eyes narrowed as she pitched a ball of wadded-up paper towel into the garbage can and hurried over.

"If I catch you here again, I'm gonna-"

"You're gonna what, pal?" the brunette demanded, catching Logan's wrist before he could land a punch. Behind her, Spinelli's eyes widened in surprise and even Jason was taken aback by her defense. "I'll tell you – you're gonna land yourself in a world of trouble, because _I'm _the only one that gets to beat up on the nerd. Come on."

With one last, scornful glare at Logan, Elizabeth grabbed Spinelli's hand and tugged him toward the door. The boy, stunned at what had just transpired, could only follow along. The little exchange, all of which Jason had witnessed, seemed most out of character for the little brunette, and Jason smiled at the thought that maybe her stubborn, fierce, rude loyalty wasn't such a bad thing – all the time – after all.

But he refused to stay and ruminate on that because he was free from her perverse hold and he wasn't going to waste his time thinking about her or anything she did. And besides, Portia was waiting for him.

So he racked the balls, left the billiards room, and was halfway up the stairs by the time the bell on the front door jingled again. Elizabeth, clearly retracing her steps from earlier, walked into the main room and right past the stairs where he was standing.

"Hey, Coleman?" he heard her ask. "I left my sweater here. Have you seen it? It was the super-cute blue one with the satin trim."

"Well, you _do _look good in blue, girlie," the bartender replied as he finished wiping down the counter. "Let's see if we can't find it for you."

She was standing with her back to him, meaning that Jason had an excellent view of her posterior in those brown pinstripe slacks. Figuring that there was nothing wrong with taking in the sights every now and again, he lingered there a moment longer. That moment was all it took for Logan, who was nursing a wounded ego across the room, spotted the woman responsible and ambled over.

"Hey, sweetheart," he drawled, grabbing her elbow and hauling her around so that she was facing him. Elizabeth gasped and struggled against his hold, but he had her firmly in hand. "I'm glad you came back around – our little talk ended too soon last time. There's a few things we gotta get straight-"

Jason was already planning to break that hand that Logan had wrapped around Elizabeth's wrist when Spinelli burst into view and made a beeline straight for them.

"Hey!" he called out, snapping his fingers so that he could catch Logan's attention. "What do you think you're doing? Don't you know who she is?"

Logan whirled Elizabeth around and glared at Spinelli, but the effect was partially ruined because he was so inebriated that his glare just looked like a dopey stare. The brunette took advantage of the moment to pull away from him, and the young man glared darkly in her general direction when he found that her wrist was no longer in his grasp.

"Get back here, you little c-"

Elizabeth backed into a table, allowing Logan to make another grab at her. He would have had her, too, if Spinelli hadn't chosen that moment to step up, raise his arm, and clock Logan in the nose. The young man grunted and fell back, knocked unconscious due to a combination of Spinelli's swift blow and the alcohol.

Both Jason and Elizabeth gaped at the boy, who stood almost menacingly over Logan's prone form as if daring him to get up and make another grab for the petite brunette.

Elizabeth was the first to recover. "Hey…thanks."

Spinelli shrugged. "Trained by the best. And I got your sweater – you left it on the stool. You wanna get out of here?"

She glanced at Coleman, who was eying the boy with newfound respect. "Uh, sure. Didn't you just get here a little while ago, though?"

"It's okay," he assured her, taking her hand and helping her step over Logan. "Coleman only gives me Pepsi. You wanna go raid Mister Corinthos Sir's wet bar?"

"Sure, let's do that. Oh, hi, Jason."

Both Spinelli and Elizabeth waved at him as they passed by, and Jason stared after them as they left the little bar and headed to the car. With a little smile, he shook his head and then jogged the rest of the way up the stairs.


	15. Chapter 15

**Hack 15**

"I don't know what you're talking about – you never lent me _A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia_!"

Elizabeth glared at Spinelli and crossed her arms over her chest. "If I tell you that I lent it to you, that means I lent it to you. And now I want it back."

"But it's not with me."

"Then go find it!" she snapped. They had been doing this same song and dance for the past twenty minutes. "It's not in my bookshelf, which clearly means that it's with you."

Spinelli crossed his arms over his chest and matched her stance. "Maybe there's a possibility that you left it in Mister Corinthos Sir's penthouse during the move."

"Maybe there's a possibility that I left my foot in your-"

"Fine! I'll go look!"

"Thank you," Elizabeth smiled sweetly as he turned for the stairs. "And for God's sake, it's like the bayou in here. Don't you two know how to use the air-conditioning?"

"We don't need it," Jason informed her, coming out of the kitchen with a sandwich and a cold beer. Instead of offering it to her, like he would have a week or so ago when he was mildly infatuated with her, he hopped over the armrest of the couch and stuffed a corner of it into his mouth. "It's nice out."

"It's ninety degrees," she muttered, tapping her toe on the floor. The steady click-click-click of her shoe attracted his attention, and Jason sat and watched her as he ate. She was looking as prim and prissy as she did any other day, dressed in a pair of gray and pink slacks with pink ballet flats, a pale pink button-down shirt, and a very light, open knit gray shrug.

"It's not that bad," he replied, stuffing a piece of lettuce into his mouth. "Just a little hot."

"A _little _hot?" Elizabeth swiped at the few loose tendrils that were now sticking slightly to her neck. "It's sweltering. I don't know how you two live like this."

"Works fine for us," Jason retorted, leaning back on the couch and throwing an arm over the rest. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

She leaned against the armchair next to the couch and fanned herself with her hand. "Nerd borrowed my book and now I need it, and he can't find it. I swear, if he lost it, I'm just going to break him in half."

Jason rolled his eyes and licked a bit of mustard from his fingers. Say what you want about Spinelli, but he made the best turkey sandwiches – when they actually had the ingredients in the fridge, that is. "Maybe you never lent it to him."

Elizabeth frowned at him and plopped down on the armchair. "You always take his side."

"Damn straight," he muttered around a mouthful of turkey. "Who else's would I take? Besides, Sonny makes up for it."

Her cheeks were looking flushed from the heat now, and sweat made her skin look dewy. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

Ah, it was so much easier to talk – or argue, rather – with her now that he wasn't at all interested in her. "Figure it out."

Elizabeth glared frostily at him and crossed her legs, tenting her fingers neatly together as she tried to ignore just how fricking hot it was in the penthouse. "Sonny doesn't take my side any more than you take Nerd's. And even if he does, why shouldn't he? You get all pissed off when he says anything to help me out, but you obviously don't think it's a big deal when you do the same. Besides, Sonny has more of a reason to stick up for me, anyway."

This last part was purred with a little smirk, and it hit its mark because Jason's spine stiffened and he sent her a dark look. "The hell's that supposed to mean?"

She shrugged coyly and rubbed at the damp tendrils that were now sticking to her neck. "Figure it out."

His jaw tightened and the enforcer took a sullen pull from his bottle. "Sonny's known me _much _longer than he's known you."

"Yeah, and you spent about six of those years in lands far away," she teased, slowly undoing the bow that held her shrug together. It was absolutely sweltering and she just _had _to get out of the thing. "I hope you at least wrote letters regularly."

Jason rolled his eyes and slammed the bottle down on the table. "Doesn't matter. Besides, Sonny and I chose to be partners. He got stuck with you."

"Nice," she smiled cattily. Even though it honestly didn't offend her that he made such a remark, she figured it'd still be worth it to guilt trip him a little. Sure enough, Jason shifted on the couch and looked away in embarrassment. "Some partners you two turned out to be, though. You might as well work in two adjacent cubicles for all the time you spend together."

He scowled at her, trying not to get distracted when she popped the first two buttons of her shirt, even though he could make out the outline of her bra if he looked carefully enough. "We spend enough time together."

Elizabeth had to giggle at that. "Yeah, I know – people talk."

Oh, for God's sake. "Spinelli! You find her damn book yet?"

"Still looking!" came the reply from upstairs.

Jason scowled and sat back down on the couch. "You know-"

And that was all he got out because when he turned around to face Elizabeth again, he saw that she had let her curly hair down from its uptight twist and was shaking it out and running her hand through it. So he sat there like an idiot with his mouth half-open as he watched her gather it all up. With her arms stretched up to tame the wild, curly, sweat-dampened mane, those two undone buttons on her shirt provided a most excellent view of what had attracted him to her in the first place.

Shit.

"Dammit, I don't know _how _you stand this heat," she cursed, standing up from her seat. She had managed to pull her hair into a bun and now pinched the fabric of her shirt between her thumb and forefinger, pulling it back and forth to air it out a bit. "Tell Spinelli that he can return my book later – I'm getting out of here."

"Found it, Dragon!" The boy in question came tumbling down the stairs with her _Thousand Plateaus_ in his hand. "You'll never guess where I found it – in Stone Cold's roo-"

"There you go, there's your damn book," Jason interrupted smoothly, taking it from Spinelli's hand and shoving it at Elizabeth. He'd completely forgotten that he had the thing in the first place. "You can go."

"Thank you," Elizabeth replied stiffly, checking the spine and pages for any damage. If it had been with Jason, he'd most likely used it to crack walnuts or something. "I'm just lucky it hasn't caught on fire in this heat, huh? Later, nerd."

"Later, Dragon," Spinelli replied, holding the door open for her. "By the way, you're a total mess."

"It's your fault, too," she answered, walking backwards as she spoke to him. "Learn how to man the AC – or an electric fan, at the least!"

Spinelli, instead of replying, just shut the door. With a shrug, he turned to Jason and rolled his eyes. "Did you see her? Crazy hair, flushed, her shirt half open. What a mess. She doesn't normally look like that. I think she's starting to let herself go. Sad, huh?"

Jason smirked to himself as the boy retreated to the kitchen to reunite with his own long-lost turkey sandwich. Yes, Elizabeth had looked quite different, but he certainly didn't think she was a total mess. With her skin flushed and pink and dewy, she had looked quite…soft. And touchable. And her appearance begged the question, did she blush like that everywhere?

* * *

"So what are you saying?"

"That being a hacker isn't only about sitting down at a computer and typing shit," Jason explained, pacing back and forth in front of Sonny's desk. "You have to have more going on than that."

"Like with the background checks," his partner mused. "Elizabeth won because she went out there and gave it the personal touch by watching the candidates."

There was no way he was admitting to something like that, so Jason deflected the observation. "You have to have some people skills, and you have to be able to think outside the box and know where to find things if you run into roadblocks. And you need to keep the bigger picture in mind-"

"Like when Elizabeth made that whole program instead of just coming up with chunks of code like Spinelli," Sonny pointed out.

Jason glared at him but couldn't afford to get into an argument in the middle of his proposal. "And you have to know how to cooperate and collaborate."

Sonny tilted his head to the side. "Cooperate and collaborate? With who?"

"That's my point," Jason responded. "We're both thinking of this in terms of just sitting at the computer by yourself and coming up with some program code. If Spinelli – or Elizabeth – is going to be the head of the tech division here, there's gonna be a lot more in play here. They should know how to talk to other people, like Stan or whoever, to get the information they want, and they should be able to network with us and Benny and Bernie to get things taken care of. So far, the two of them have just been sitting in their rooms and typing for a few hours."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying we put them together," he explained. "We get them to team up on these challenges and work them _together_."

Sonny snorted. "They'll kill each other."

"Maybe," Jason shrugged. "But they'd have to know that if they do that, they both lose. They have to learn to put up with each other and get their work done _together_, and do whatever part of the assignment they do best and rely on the other person to do their share."

"I see what you're saying, and I like it," Sonny agreed, snapping his fingers. "I think it's a great idea."

Jason crossed his arms over his chest, pleased. "Good. We'll put them together and judge them on how long it takes for them to do it."

"One problem, though." Sonny rubbed the corners of his mouth with his index finger and thumb. "We can't just leave them alone for this. Someone is going to have to sit there with them and watch them and see how they're doing it and how they're getting along."

And this was the part where he'd graciously step in… "I can do it."

The mobster's eyebrows jumped. "What?"

Jason shrugged, trying to look indifferent. "As long as they do it in Penthouse II, I can watch them while I do my work."

Perfect delivery. He couldn't appear too eager, after all.

"I – No, that'd be great," Sonny got out, both surprised and grateful that his partner would step up like this. If it was up to him to watch the kids, he'd probably end up gouging his eyes out with the stylus or something. "Great. This is what we'll do. I'll let Bennie, Bernie and Stan know that they should tailor the challenges to this new setup."

"Okay," Jason replied, already turning around and heading for the door. "Let me know when they've got the next one."

"It's good for me, too," Sonny continued, linking his fingers together behind his head. "It keeps things new and exciting for these challenges. Elizabeth and Spinelli have been getting bored with them, you can tell."

Jason eyed the door. "Yeah…"

"Plus, it works out because if we introduce this, I can really put a stall on the whole actually coming to a decision part of it." Sonny shuddered and leaned back in his chair. "I'm not looking forward to that at all."

"Great," Jason replied with one foot already in the hall. "Just let me know when it starts."

* * *

_The first tag-team challenge…_

Elizabeth had initially declined to come to Jason's penthouse for the challenges and insisted that it was just fine if she and Spinelli worked at her place. They'd time themselves on the honor system and see how it went.

Ten minutes later, however, Spinelli was marching back into Penthouse II with his computer and a sullen Elizabeth reluctantly in tow.

Jason looked up from the game of pool he was setting up. "What happened?"

"Her penthouse is too cold, Stone Cold," he informed him, flopping down on the couch and setting Princess Peach up on the coffee table. Elizabeth let out a disgruntled sigh and did the same. "My boys were standing at attention, and we couldn't have that."

That was terminology that Jason wasn't familiar with. "Your boys?"

"My nips."

He rolled his eyes and chalked up the cue. "Thanks, Spinelli."

"Such a baby, this one," Elizabeth muttered, shaking out her chestnut waves and getting comfortable on the couch. "Wear a damn sweater if you're so cold. And stop talking about your nips."

"But they bring all the girls to the yard."

"No, they don't."

"Fine."

"Okay, so let's do this," Elizabeth sighed, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "What's the first thing the prompt says to do?"

"We have to database all this information," Spinelli replied, handing her a thick file of stats provided by Benny and Bernie. "And then we have to run complex macros on it to get it to sort the way we want."

"What _is _all this stuff, anyway?"

Jason paused while lining up his shot to watch as Spinelli and Elizabeth went through the information. There had to be at least half a ream of stuff there. Benny and Bernie were obviously sadists.

It took the kids about an hour to go through the stack and sort it all the way they need it for the data entry process. Elizabeth was taking the lead on that one, reading out all the specs for the given sheet, and then Spinelli would take it and place it on one of several stacks he had created as part of his 'system.'

He and Elizabeth would then argue over the efficacy of the system.

Finally, they got to work. It was also around this time that Elizabeth announced that she was going to stroke out from the heat, and would someone please mind getting her some water? So Jason had abandoned his game and gotten her the damn water, and then Spinelli wanted water, and then he wanted water with _crushed _ice, not cubed ice, and then Elizabeth wanted ice, and then Spinelli was hungry, and then they both wanted barbequed chips, and then they wanted orange soda, and then they wanted orange soda with ice, and then they wanted orange soda with _crushed _ice, not cubed ice, Stone Cold.

He was going to kill them both and hurl them off the docks into their watery graves.

But he found that he couldn't complain too much because every time he returned from the kitchen into the main room, it seemed like Elizabeth had lost an article of clothing.

First, it was the little scarf she had tied around her neck to 'pull the whole outfit together,' as she said in response to one of Spinelli's horribly misguided questions. Then it was her little green cardigan, which soon found a spot slung over the back of his couch. And then it was the topmost of her layered t-shirts, and then it was the next t-shirt, and then it was her shoes, and then her socks, and then the little sash she wore in her hair.

And finally, Elizabeth Webber was sitting barefoot on his couch wearing a pair of thin, white, cotton drawstring pants and an olive green tank-top.

And Jason was happy.

* * *

_The third tag-team challenge…_

He was so going to get her into bed.

At this point, that was a total given.

Jason had decided, to hell with his previous vow to stay away from her and not pay any attention to her. What did he care if the guards made fun of him? He'd threaten them, they'd go back to minding their own damn business. And what did he care if Elizabeth was loud, immature, and annoying? It was hard to be immature and annoying while having sex, at least in his mind, and he had to say that he didn't quite care if she was loud. In fact, he had a feeling that he'd rather enjoy that.

And so what if Sonny would have a coronary? He could handle Sonny. They were partners, after all, and it wasn't like Sonny would have him knocked off. That would be bad for business. So Sonny would just be mad at him for a little while for nailing his ward, and then he'd get over it. He'd have to.

This was a perfect setup, really. Elizabeth had come over three days ago to work on the second challenge, and that had been a success. However, there were two parts to that challenge and so she and Spinelli were back on the couch now, having just received the other half.

"I don't want to do this."

"We _have _to."

"I don't want to."

"Look, the sooner we get it done, the sooner we can relax and forget about it."

"It's stupid."

"I know that, but we still have to get it done."

"I hate these things."

"Spinelli, just shut up and do your work," Jason called from the kitchen.

"It's not me!" the boy yelled back, upset at being reprimanded so unjustly. "I'm the one saying we need to work, and Dragon's the one slacking off!"

"I don't want to do this," Elizabeth added for good measure. "I'm sick of these challenges. We all know I'm the best, anyway."

"We know no such thing!"

"The sooner you admit it, nerd, the better off we'll all be."

"I'll admit nothing, because it's not true. The Jackal is unsurpassed in technical prowess."

"…I really hate your butt."

Spinelli twisted around and looked at his backside. "You know, I don't really have much of a butt. It's kind of…not there. Can you see my butt, Stone Cold?"

"Your ass, you mean?" Jason muttered, emerging from the kitchen with three bottles of beer. "You show it all the time."

"What?"

"Who wants beer?" the enforcer asked, handing a bottle each to Spinelli and Elizabeth. "Take a break for a little while, then get started."

Elizabeth gratefully took the bottle from him and cracked it open. "Ooh, thank you. Ice cold beer – so this is how you guys function in this bayou."

"You know, you only think it's so hot because your place is an igloo," Spinelli countered. "If you let the AC rest for a little while, you'd get used to the fresh air."

"No, thank you," she shuddered. "It's eighty-nine degrees out, and it's _night_. I'm just fine with my air-conditioning. At least I can wear what I want without sweating like a pig."

"You can still wear what you want," Spinelli pointed out. "See? I'm still in my normal plaid shorts and shirt. And you – you actually look comfortable, and not as done up as you usually are. See? Pajama pants and a t-shirt – what could be more comfortable?"

Elizabeth had to admit that he was right: her thin pajama bottoms and soft white t-shirt were quite comfortable at the moment, especially since she happened to be sprawled on the couch with her legs across Spinelli's lap and an ice cold beer in her hand. "I want to go to sleep. I don't want to do this thing."

"Thinking of giving up?" Jason teased, motioning for her to move over so that he could sit down on the couch. Elizabeth grumbled something under her breath but straightened, giving him enough room to plop down. But with the three of them sitting there, it was kind of crowded and Elizabeth was too lazy to fully straighten, so she settled for leaning against Jason's side as she nursed her beer.

The enforcer grabbed the remote and flipped the television on, stopping at the nightly news. "So how much stuff do you guys have to do this time?"

"Not as much as last time," Spinelli answered. He lifted Elizabeth's legs briefly so that he could stretch his own onto the coffee table. Once this was accomplished, he let her legs fall right back down. "Oh, isn't the game on soon?"

"In about five minutes," the enforcer replied. "You watch this stuff?"

"Sometimes," Elizabeth replied. "Max is a big fan, so I'll watch with him and Stan sometimes. Sonny will watch only if he has time and is in the mood. I take it you're a big fan?"

Jason shrugged and stretched his arm across the back of the couch, not altogether minding the weight of her head on his shoulder and her torso along his side. "We didn't really keep up when we were traveling. Now that we've been home for a little while, I'll watch sometimes if I'm not doing something else."

"I never figured that you were into this sort of thing, Dragon," Spinelli admitted. "Drinking beer, catching the game…"

She shrugged and took a pull from the bottle. "You'd be surprised. I can be one of the boys when I really feel like it. Hey! Don't laugh!" She elbowed Jason in the gut when he didn't stop, and stomped her heel into Spinelli's thigh. "I can, too. Just ask Stan or Max or, or Johnny or somebody. They know."

"Okay, okay," Jason chuckled, absently drumming his fingers on her stomach. "Spinelli, get the chips."

"Right away, Stone Cold." Elizabeth curled her legs back and allowed him to get up, and kept them that way until he returned with the bag. "Here we go. We're running low, though. Down to our last two bags."

"We'll get more tomorrow," Jason promised. Elizabeth took the bag and pulled out a chip for herself, then offered it to Jason. She held it for him while he rummaged around and pulled out a handful that he promptly stuffed into his mouth. She barely noticed that he was rubbing his knuckles against the soft fabric of her shirt. "Turn the volume up – I can't hear shit."

Spinelli yawned and did as he was asked, then settled back into the cushions. Elizabeth, pleased with her position in the middle of the couch and therefore directly in front of the television, stretched out, cat-like, between the two and nursed her beer. The three of them sat this way for a good long while, idly stretched out in front of the TV and watching the game, and the challenge was almost forgotten.

That is, until there was a knock at the door and Sonny let himself in without waiting for an answer.

"Jason!" The mobster gaped at his enforcer, his ward, and the young man with the speech impediment. "I thought you said you'd watch them while they worked!"

Jason looked up at Sonny, and then at the kids, both of whom looked hopefully back at him. "We're taking a break tonight."

* * *

_The fifth tag-team challenge…_

Their rhythm was back.

That familiar stop-and-go, restrain-and-release…it was back! They had it again.

They were back to ribbing each other and baiting each other, and it felt damn good. By the time the fifth challenge rolled around, Elizabeth wasn't anywhere near as uneasy spending time in his penthouse (and yes, it was his, no matter what she said) as she had been before. She came over the night they had agreed on, this time dressed in a pair of light linen capris and a long, silhouette-skimming t-shirt. The atmosphere was relaxed, chill - just how he had hoped to make it.

She wasn't uneasy there anymore. She wasn't even uneasy around him, really. Their little sparring matches attested to that. Spinelli usually got in the way, but he mistook the game for genuine dislike and would often try to distract the two from it in misguided hopes of alleviating the tension. The one thing Jason had to admit that he liked best about Elizabeth was that she gave as good as she got. No matter what he said to her, she had a comeback and vice versa, and they never lost that rhythm. It was encouraging.

She was due over in ten minutes, and Jason was trying to clean up. He was never the messy sort, so it followed that he rarely had to clean his penthouse. He didn't have much stuff to begin with, and whatever he did have, he always made sure to put it back in his place so that he was never in the awkward situation of having to clean up before some arrived.

That had all changed the second he took one Damien Spinelli under his wing, however. The boy was a total slob. And the worst part was, he didn't even realize it. He didn't do it out of some subconscious need for clutter to perhaps validate his existence and appease intense contingency issues – oh, no. He just threw things randomly and walked around them and hunted through them, all without even realizing that they were there in the first place.

So it was usually up to Jason to clean up after the kid and make sure that he was wearing clean clothes instead of something he picked up off a pile in his bedroom, and that sort of thing. That was why he was currently scrounging around under the couch cushions, pulling up dirty socks and Pop-Tart wrappers and disinfecting the coffee table after Spinelli had spilled something sticky on it.

If his guards or Sonny could see him now…he'd never hear the fucking end of it.

But really, Jason couldn't mind. He could only accept this as one of the many ways that his life had changed after taking Spinelli in. And he didn't even resent the boy for it: as it was, he wouldn't have changed a thing. Never in his life did he think that he'd befriend a kid like Spinelli, a kid who was, for all intents and purposes, the exact kind of kid that would have annoyed him beyond reason a few years ago.

But he found that, surprising as it was, unlikely as it was, he genuinely enjoyed Spinelli's company. The boy understood him and understood his tics. When he knew that Jason was in a bad mood, he kept out of his way. When he knew that Jason was in the mood to kick back and relax, Spinelli was the first one to bring out the pool cues and the beer. Of course, he usually got downgraded to orange soda, but he was cool about it.

But for all their relatively 'fun' times, there were darker times. The downside to having his friend with him was that Spinelli was constantly facing the same danger he did. So Jason had to watch his own back and watch his friend's, and sometimes even that wasn't good enough. Never in his life had he been more afraid than when Spinelli was taken hostage in Germany, dragged away at gunpoint with the promise of slow death. Jason had saved him that time, but just barely. Spinelli had lived – just barely – to save Jason's life in turn several times.

And even though they were now at home, taking it easy in the sleepy, boring little town of Port Charles, the fact still remained that they were partners. A little lapse in the normal excitement they were used to wouldn't change that. His life was so different now from what it was, from what he had imagined it would be, and all because of some dopey kid that had been in the wrong place at the right time and saved his life. Jason would always watch Spinelli's back, and he knew that Spinelli would always watch his.

Except when he left an empty pizza box under the entertainment center.

Jason scowled to himself as he scooped the box up and rattled it just to make sure there was nothing inside. Unfortunately, that was the same time that Elizabeth knocked on the door, and since Jason knew he had all of two seconds before she let herself in, he quickly trotted over to the closet and dumped his entire armload – dirty socks, candy wrappers, and that damn box from _Luna Mezzo Mare_ – inside and slammed the door.

"Hey, you," Elizabeth greeted him, poking her head into the penthouse. "Where's Spinelli?"

Always right down to business. She never stopped to make small talk when she had things to do – she always started by asking for Spinelli and only sat down when the boy appeared, and that was when they got to work. Usually. It was up to him to talk to her, which was ironic because talking wasn't his strong suit. But he was learning, thanks to her.

"He just went out. He'll be back in a few minutes."

Ha. Spinelli had been practically forced out the door by Jason ten minutes ago to pick up more chips, orange soda, and beer. Naturally, Max would take care of the part that required an identification card.

"You wanna sit down?"

She glanced out into the hallway at the elevator. "Well, I could come back when he gets here…"

Well, that wouldn't help him score. "No, it's fine. He'll be back any second. Come on in. You want something to drink?"

"An orange soda would be nice," Elizabeth acquiesced, slowly making her way over to the couch as Jason went into the kitchen to get it for her. "Place is cleaner today."

"Spinelli spent most of the day on campus."

"That explains it," she laughed, her eyes twinkling. Jason made his way around the couch and handed her a bottle of orange soda.

"Last two," he explained, plopping down with his own.

The brunette arched a dark brow. "You drink orange soda?"

He paused with the bottle midway to his lips. "Out of beer. Sent the kid out for more."

"Of course." Her eyes darted to his, and then she busied herself with taking off her shoes. "So…"

Jason drummed his fingers against his thigh. "Yeah."

That was apparently good enough for her, and the two of them sat in vaguely uncomfortable silence for a long while. Elizabeth tossed her hair over her shoulder and curled her legs up under herself, playing with the cuff of her pajama bottoms. Jason's eyes traveled around the room as he tried to think of something to say, and his gaze came to rest on a travel book that he'd tucked into the entertainment center after he had finished using it as a coaster.

"You and Sonny ever been to Egypt?"

His question surprised her, and Elizabeth lifted her wide eyes to his. "No, never. The closest we got was Morocco. We had a little house by the ocean. It was beautiful. Why? You and Spinelli have?"

Jason nodded. "I was visiting an associate in Cairo, and Spinelli liked the food and the people so much that we stayed an extra week or two. Then he wanted to see the pyramids and the Sphinx, so we did that."

He had her now. The little brunette, a self-described travel nut, was hanging onto his every word. "Really? Wow. Did you ride camels through the desert?"

He nodded proudly. "One of them spit on Spinelli's beanie. He cried about it all the way to the Sphinx."

Elizabeth laughed that familiar, throaty laugh of hers that had a funny way of making him want to make her laugh again. "How was it?"

"Nice," he shrugged. "Old."

"Hm, figures."

His eyes twinkled when he caught her teasing smirk. "There was a sandstorm on the way back. Real bad. We had to take cover for hours until it was over."

Elizabeth troubled her lower lip with worry and twisted around on the couch so that she was sitting closer to him and facing his way. "Did everyone make it out okay?"

"Our guide suffocated," Jason replied, tapping his nails on his bottle. Somehow, his conversations had a way of turning grim. It was getting kind of annoying, especially when he was trying to charm a young woman. "And the other guide got us lost. We rode in the wrong direction for about seven hours before catching up with another caravan or something that took us to the nearest city. Spinelli was ready to leave after that."

He'd apparently rescued the tale of death and disaster, because Elizabeth was smiling. "Where did you go next?"

"I think we went to…Budapest." He stretched one arm across the back of the couch and set his soda bottle on his knee. "We spent a few days there, then went to Austria. I had to meet with some of our bankers there."

Elizabeth nodded, and it irked him that she was familiar with their accounts in the country.

"After that, we went to Sri Lanka for a few days before jumping over to Indonesia."

"Hey, that's close to India," the brunette beamed. "What did you do there?"

"We were invited by an old business associate of Frank Smith," Jason explained. "He asked us to stay with him for the week, so we did."

"Did you have any fun adventures?" she teased.

He squinted at a point on the wall, trying to remember. "A cow took Spinelli's iPod, so he punched it."

And for some reason, that entirely factual account sent Elizabeth into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. She laughed so hard that she damn near spilled her soda on his couch, and Jason chuckled as he reached over to take it from her. She had to rest her head on the back of the couch as she giggled, no doubt picturing the entire ordeal, and that was exactly what Spinelli walked in on when he returned from the store.

"Hey…Stone Cold, Dragon," he got out, eyeing the two of them suspiciously. Elizabeth tried to compose herself, and quickly wiped away a tear. "What's…going on?"

Jason frowned warily. "Have you been into the Afternoon Dee-lite again?"

"No, swear," Spinelli replied instantly, holding up his right hand that coincidentally also held a six-pack of beer. "I'm just…surprised that you two are…here. I'm not high! Stop looking at me like that!"

"Well, you can't blame him for being suspicious," Elizabeth pointed out, her head still resting on Jason's forearm. "Afternoon Dee-lite has a slowing effect on…people, after all."

He rolled his eyes and strode over to the coffee table. "Well, I'm not. Here's what you wanted, Stone Cold: chips, orange soda, and beer."

"And now Spinelli and I should get to work," the brunette spoke up, sitting up straight on the couch. "I've got the prompt on my flash drive – Stan sent it to me through my new email because he had a date tonight and didn't want to stop off here. You probably got a copy, too."

"We'll use yours," Spinelli informed her, waving his hand to let Jason know that now was the time to get off the couch. "Hey, have you got Mister Corinthos Sir to use the untraceable account you set up for him yet?"

She shook her head. "Nope. He says he'll get around to it, but he never does. I'll have to bug him about it again. Jason? Do you mind?"

He realized that she was referring to the fact that he was still sitting on the couch. Jason shook his head and slowly got up. "No. You two…go ahead."

"Now _he's _slow," Elizabeth whispered to Spinelli. "It's contagious."


	16. Chapter 16

**Hack 16**

Damien Spinelli was ridiculously happy.

Not only were his challenges going great, but he had also just gotten a honey of a tip from his tap on the Dragon's cell phone. By some stroke of good luck, she still hadn't discovered it – just like they, by some stroke of horrible luck hadn't discovered the bug in Penthouse II – and would often use her phone to talk to Stan. She had recently told the Night Ninja that she was going to work on a special gaming application for Sonny that he'd hinted about but hadn't outright asked for.

And now that the valuable information was all his, Spinelli immediately set to work making the game that Mister Corinthos Sir wanted. He spent all night coding just to be sure that he would beat the Dragon, and had it done by morning just in time for breakfast.

The smell of French toast greeted him as soon as he and Jason stepped into Penthouse II, and Spinelli walked right past Elizabeth and over to Sonny, holding his Princess Peach out like an olive branch.

"Fair morrow, Mister Corinthos Sir," he beamed, shooing Elizabeth away from the corner of the couch so that he could take her seat. "The Jackal would like to extend to you from humble knee a gift."

This caught the little brunette's attention, and Jason smirked when he saw her eye Spinelli suspiciously. "What gift?"

"Something told me that you wouldn't be able to resist this," the boy chortled, setting his laptop down on Sonny's lap. "Go ahead – try your hand."

Jason laughed to himself and took a sip of his coffee, thoroughly enjoying the horrified look on Elizabeth's face. "Can't win them all."

She glared darkly at him, but that was nothing compared to the expression on Sonny's face as he stared at the computer screen.

"What. The Hell. Is this?"

Spinelli blinked and peered down at the screen. "…It's a blackjack game, customized to your liking. I even put in the bright red background that you like, even though I was a little iffy on that color, but I do not question the whims of the great Mister Corinthos Sir."

Sonny gritted his teeth and glared up at the boy. He had yet to touch the computer. "What's the meaning of this?"

Spinelli's eyes widened, and he looked helplessly at a bewildered Jason before looking back at the mob lord. Jason looked over at Elizabeth, who was curled up on the couch and smirking against the rim of her Hello Kitty mug.

Ah, shit.

"I-It's blackjack, Mister Corinthos Sir," Spinelli sputtered. "Your favorite card game. I thought you'd like it."

Without removing his eyes from the boy's, Sonny slammed down Princess Peach's lid. "Three years ago, I lost 975,000 because I didn't know when to stop playing blackjack."

Jason closed his eyes.

Oh, shit.

"I couldn't pay my employees for _three weeks_ without moving money around, which I couldn't do because I was being investigated at the time by the IRS."

The enforcer pinched the bridge of his nose.

Oh, _shit_.

"I haven't touched the game since. Four straight years, and I haven't played a _single game _of blackjack."

Elizabeth giggled and Jason scrubbed a hand over his face. Spinelli could only gulp.

_Shit, shit, shit._

"And you have the gall to bring that game back into my house?!" Sonny shoved the computer at Spinelli and abruptly stood, nearly knocking over his armchair. He glared at the boy and then turned to Elizabeth and gestured toward the table. "Help yourself before school, sweetheart – I've lost my appetite."

Elizabeth sat still, enjoying the silence as Sonny stormed out the door and let it slam loudly behind him, and eyed Jason and Spinelli smugly. This had been the _perfect _way to get back at the nerd for bugging her phone.

"Can't win them all, boys."

* * *

It was tough being the only girl in the Corinthos organization sometimes, and after spending four hours working with Stan and the guards on surveillance and listening to them relay pretty graphic stories from their sexcapade saga, Elizabeth was more than ready to just get away and relax.

Thanks to Spinelli, she had recently found a new way to do that. It was just too bad that Sonny had caught her. This time, however, she hoped to be able to get away with it. She'd visit Spinelli, get what she needed, feign a headache as she walked past her guard, and then pretend to turn in for the night. Her guard would tell Sonny if Sonny asked, and her guardian wouldn't bother her if he thought she was ill and sleeping it off.

It would all go off perfectly.

Elizabeth knocked on the door of Penthouse II and let herself in without waiting for a reply. It was a force of habit – in fact, she rarely even knocked, because it just seemed so natural to walk right in.

Jason was sitting on the couch, watching television. Yikes. She hadn't anticipated that.

"What do you want?"

Elizabeth glanced at the stairs. "Is nerd around?"

"No," came the bored reply. "He went out. Something about…something. I don't know, I wasn't listening."

"Great," she huffed under her breath. "Okay, well, see ya."

"What did you need him for?" Jason called out before she had turned the knob.

"Uh, nothing," Elizabeth hedged. "Just wanted to…hang out."

He slid her an assessing look. "You never want to just 'hang out' with him."

"Well, maybe I did this once," she snipped. "What's it to you?"

"Nothing," Jason shrugged, flipping the television off and getting up. "I was actually planning on asking him if he wanted to shoot pool at Jake's tonight."

"So you're stuck at home, too, huh?"

He nodded. "You need anything from him? I can get it for you, if you lent him some book or anything…"

Elizabeth shook her head. "No, but thanks, though. I was just bored and…a little on edge tonight, and I just thought I'd ask him to go get coffee or pie or something. But if he's out…I guess that's it. See you later, Jason."

His next words stopped her cold. "You wanna do something tonight?"

Elizabeth planted her heel on the floor and slowly turned around. "…What?"

Jason shrugged, looking just indifferent enough to make her believe him. "You're bored, I'm stuck here – do you want to do something?"

Her eyes narrowed, but she appeared to like the idea. "Like what?"

"Ever been on a motorcycle?"

* * *

"It's almost two in the morning – where _is _that girl?"

Spinelli wrung his hands together as he watched Sonny pace back and forth in the hallway that connected their suites. "I don't know, Mister Corinthos Sir, but I do know that she and the Night Ninja and the Silent Sentinels-"

"English, Spinelli."

The boy nodded and tried to reconfigure. "Elizabeth and…Stan and…the bodyguard ones were meeting at the warehouse tonight around dinner time to do some work. I'm not sure exactly what, but I know she was there. Maybe she and the Night Ninja are still hanging out?"

"I already called Stan," Sonny sighed. "He's at home. Max and Milo and John went back to their place, and Ritchie's on duty at the warehouse tonight. Benny and Bernie are still there getting some work done. She's not with any of them. And she didn't take a guard either. Damn it!"

Spinelli jumped when Sonny slammed a fist against the elevator panel.

"Why wouldn't she take a guard?" he repeated, as if the boy had the answer. "She knows to take a guard with her wherever she goes – why wouldn't she take one tonight? She's not answering her cell, she's not checking her email…nothing."

"Why don't you go back to your penthouse, Mister Corinthos Sir," Spinelli suggested, earning a dark glare for his trouble. "I mean, why don't you go sit down and relax? The Jackal would be happy to provide you with some snackage. You can nibble and wait for the Dragon to come home. I'm sure she's on her way – she doesn't stay out this late."

"Well…"

"Come on, Mister Corinthos Sir," the boy encouraged, placing his hands on Sonny's shoulders and steering him into the penthouse. "You sit down over there, and the Jackal will procure the snacks."

As soon as he was satisfied that Sonny wouldn't come out into the hall and start pacing again, Spinelli turned on his heel and ran back to Penthouse II to retrieve two bottles of orange soda and a family sized bag of barbequed chips.

"I'm not eating that crap." Those were the first words out of Sonny's mouth as soon as Spinelli stepped back into the penthouse.

"Please? Just try it, Mister Corinthos Sir. The Dragon resisted, too, and now she's a fan," he pointed out, ripping the bag open and holding it out. Reluctantly, Sonny withdrew a chip.

"These are horrible for your teeth."

"I'm willing to suffer the consequences," Spinelli replied, opening up the orange soda and handing it off. "Now let's just sit here and wait for the Dragon. Maybe when Stone Cold gets back from wherever he went, he'll have an idea about how to get in touch with her."

Sonny mumbled something in reply and eyed the soda skeptically before gingerly raising it to his lips. He took a small sip, and Spinelli watched as he smacked his lips.

"Well? Good?"

"This stuff is gonna kill me."

"But what a way to go!" the boy cheered, sobering up when Sonny glared at him. "No? Okay, I'll get you some water."

By the time he got back with a glass of purified water, Sonny had already consumed a handful of chips. He seemed hardly to even realize he was eating them; he'd put one in his mouth, chomp it up, then move on to another and then another, all the while staring at a point on the wall.

"Don't worry, Mister Corinthos Sir, I'm sure she's fine," Spinelli tried to assure him. "She was trained by you, after all, right? She should be able to take care of herself. Give 'em the old one-two if anyone asks for it."

Sonny shook his head, distracted. "No. That's not…no. I kept her far away from that sort of thing. I let her in on all the details of the business, sure, but I never once put a gun in her hands. Maybe if the guards taught her how to shoot – I don't know. All I know is that I didn't. I never wanted to see her holding a gun, or worse, having to use it."

Spinelli arched a brow as he lowered himself onto the armrest. "But…surely the Dragon knows some form of self-defense, right? She's a young woman, after all, and all women should know things in case any…Nefarious Ones come after them to do nefarious things. Right?"

Sonny rolled his eyes toward the boy. "Have you seen Elizabeth? She's five feet tall and weighs about as much as one of my legs. She couldn't hurt anyone. But we did teach her to go for the groin and run like hell, so…"

"Then go for the groin she will," Spinelli offered. "Wait, that sounded wrong."

The mobster smirked and waved it off. "Forget it."

They sat in general silence, exchanging a few words every now and again, for about twenty minutes. And just as Spinelli was beginning to yawn, and thinking to himself that maybe now would be a good time to excuse himself and get to bed, he heard some strange noises in the hallway. It sounded like…

_Laughter_.

Without saying anything to Sonny, he got up and bounded out into the hallway only to see Jason and Elizabeth emerge from the elevator, both of them laughing about something as they continued to try to tame their windblown hair.

"Where were you two?" Spinelli asked suspiciously, his narrowed eyes darting back and forth between his mentor and his nemesis. Sonny, hearing the commotion, had come out into the hallway and stood behind him, quickly assessing the situation. "What were you doing out…together?"

Jason squinted at the boy as Elizabeth began to shrug out of his leather jacket, which had found its place around her narrow shoulders. "Are you high again?"

"No!" he burst out, stepping forward and insinuating himself between the couple. "I just want to know – what were you two doing out together? Where did you go? What kept you so long? And _why _is she wearing your jacket?!"

"It was windy on his bike," Elizabeth replied defensively, shoving the jacket against the boy's chest. "You're so in love with it – here you go."

Spinelli sputtered in reply, clutching the leather and not even letting go when Jason moved to take it. "But I – you two – the Dragon – this is a most unnecessary alliance!"

"Relax, Spinelli," Jason said, finally snatching the jacket from him. "Are you sure you're not high?"

"So you were with Jason this whole time?" Sonny's voice interrupted the little squabble and all three of them turned around to face him. "Is that right?"

"Finally," the boy muttered, blowing his hair out of his face. "Lay it on them, Mister Corinthos Sir."

"Then what the hell was I so worried about?" Sonny wanted to know as he looked back and forth between the two. "Okay, good. So you were with him, that's why you didn't take a guard: you didn't need to. Great. I just wish you guys would have told me, instead of letting me sit up all night and worry. Okay, then, have a good night."

Spinelli's jaw dropped to the floor as Sonny turned around and calmly returned to his own penthouse. "That…That's _it_?"

"What were you expecting, nerd?" Elizabeth demanded. "What's there to freak out about? Jason took me for a ride. Showed me the Cliff Road and the water and this old house. Then we came back. Thanks for the ride, Jason."

He shrugged, already on his way to his own penthouse. "Sure. See you later."

"Bye," Elizabeth called out as she headed to hers. "Close your mouth, nerd. You're attracting flies."

* * *

_A few days later…_

"I guess, in the end, this whole question of who's going to get this job comes down to our mentors. Because they're the ones that we're going to have to work with once _one of us_ actually wins."

Elizabeth eyed Spinelli warily. There hadn't been any food at Jason's and she hadn't felt like cooking, and since both of them had a craving for fish tacos, they had gone out to the best seafood joint in Port Charles. And since they were a waterfront town, there were _tons _of seafood joints. But _Call Me Del-Ishmael_ put them all to shame every single time.

"Whatchu talkin' 'bout, nerd?"

"Charming impression, but no," he replied, licking a dollop of sour cream from his finger. "It all comes down to what kind of relationship we have with our mentors."

The brunette snorted and slurped her soda. "My relationship with Sonny is the same as your relationship with Jason, except that I don't live up Sonny's butt."

He flicked a piece of lettuce at her. "Not so, Dragon. My relationship with the Stone Cold One is _infinitely _better than your relationship with Mister Corinthos Sir."

Elizabeth made a face and took another bite of her taco. "No way."

"It's true. Let's think about it for a second," he mused, waving his own taco thoughtfully in the air. "You and Mister Corinthos Sir are tight. No one's arguing against that. He would probably lay down his life for you if you needed him to – probably already has on occasion."

Elizabeth tossed her hair over her shoulder and took a proud slurp of her soda. There was no denying that. "So?"

"My point, Dragon, is that you and Mister Corinthos Sir have a father-daughter type of relationship," Spinelli explained. "He felt responsible for the accident, and he was the only one you remembered when you woke up. You were afraid and alone, so he took you in and stayed with you while you recovered, and he got to feel like he was a good guy and that he had a purpose and that he could help people instead of just get them hurt. And because he had just lost someone that he loved most intensely, you let him take care of you like he couldn't take care of her. You fit together into these caregiver roles that you've never really fallen out of."

She took another sip of her soda and arched a brow at him. "So far I'm not seeing any problems, nerd."

"But that's my whole point," he persisted. "You're rocking the whole father-daughter thing, which, don't get me wrong, it's a totally noble pursuit and all, but it's why you'll never be equal partners."

"What?"

He shrugged, putting up his hands in a don't-shoot-the-messenger way. "You have to admit it. Mister Corinthos Sir is always going to see you as his little girl, in a little dress, with little pigtails and little saddle shoes."

Elizabeth's dark brows furrowed. "Wow. That _is _like a little girl."

"Precisely," Spinelli emphasized. "He's never going to see you as a capable, in-charge hacker that can bail him out of any and all of his messes without him having to come check up on you. At the end of the day, you're going to be his little girl and he's going to want to take care you just like he always has since you moved in. It's not like that with me and Stone Cold."

He shook his head and took a proud, deliberate sip of his soda. "Not at all. Listen and learn, Dragon: me and Stone Cold are equal partners. Cumpleaños, if you will."

"That means birthday, idiot. You're looking for compañeros."

"That's what I said," he insisted. "We're total partners. We discuss things and do things together, and in our four years on the road, no one has ever managed to come between us. That's right, Yoko, no one's ever broken up the band."

She picked up a piece of tomato and hurled it at his nose, sitting back with a smirk when it landed on target. "That's what you get for calling me Yoko Ono."

"Fair enough," the boy allowed. "That was cruel and unnecessary. But I stand by my point: no one has succeeded in breaking up the band because we're equal partners. Now, some interloper could easily break up your band because Mister Corinthos Sir doesn't see you as his partner, but his subordinate, so he doesn't even have to consider you. He can do what he wants because he thinks that since you're his 'kid,' it doesn't really matter. That wouldn't be so if you two were partners like me and Stone Cold."

Elizabeth tilted her head to the side, watching as Spinelli took a giant, triumphant bite of his taco. His words gave her cause to stop and think, and she realized that she might have just stumbled upon something.

Spinelli had been very concerned and, dare she think it, distressed a few nights ago when she and Jason returned to Harborview Towers a little before three in the morning. He acted as if something horribly untoward had happened, when in truth it was all perfectly innocent. Jason had taken her for a bike ride and they stopped at a bridge out in the wilderness in some forest preserve, and then he took her really fast along the cliffs, and then showed her some old house he liked. The house part had been a little boring, but she had hiked along after him anyway because he obviously enjoyed returning to the ruins. And then they had taken the long way home.

They had talked a lot that night. Not about anything too heavy or personal, but a lot of talking nonetheless. They talked about his travels, and about him and Spinelli and about his old family, the Quartermaines, and about her troubles with the Webbers and Spencers. Nothing intensely personal, but significant still. It had been…nice enough. She wasn't a big talker when it came to personal things, anyway, and she didn't think she'd want a repeat of it anytime soon, but the ride had been incredible. It had also given her an opportunity to smell Jason's neck. And that was nice.

However, it was enough to cause Spinelli to freak out a bit until he realized that nothing was going on. And though she had expressed little more than annoyance over that fact a few days ago, she could see it from a different angle now.

The boy had been genuinely afraid that she was getting in good with Jason and worse, that Jason was into her. Of course, the second part was completely ridiculous: for crying out loud, she'd _know _if a guy was attracted to her or not. She wasn't _that _inexperienced or naïve.

But the first part…that was interesting.

And given all his crap about her relationship to Sonny being nothing compared to his relationship with Jason, well, she could see how the little guy was extremely territorial when it came to Jason. And what could be more fun, then, but to undermine that and let the little nerd know not to mess with her or insult her place in Sonny's life?

If she continued getting in good with Jason – hell, maybe, by some freak chance becoming _involved _with him – well, that would just turn the little nerd's world upside down. He'd think twice before he tried to psych her out about her seemingly trivial role in Sonny's life.

So that was it: she could steal Jason's affections away from the little nerd. Hell, it wasn't even his affections she was after: it was his attention. She'd just distract him long enough to send Spinelli the message. That could be mildly entertaining.

Provided, though, that Jason was in fact attracted to her or could potentially be attracted to her. There was a slight chance, after all. Maybe. But no matter what, there was no way that she was flirting with or throwing herself at a man that wasn't interested in her. That's where she drew the line. She had absolutely no intention of working to attract the interest of a man that just plain _wasn't_.

So that's what she would do: she'd investigate the situation and see if there were any small hints that Jason was attracted to her that she had somehow missed. And then, if the opportunity presented itself – but ONLY if the opportunity presented itself – she'd make her move.

Maybe.

* * *

_A day or two later…_

"Who, Jason? Oh, honey, he's interested, all right."

"Morgan? Yeah, he'd go for that in a New York minute."

"You mean the Boss Man? Kid, he wants to do you six ways to Sunday."

"What, you blind or something? I thought you were supposed to be a woman – you're supposed to know that he's into you before even _he _does!"

Yeah, she had the worst friends in the world.

Apparently, Johnny, Max, Milo, and Ritchie all knew that Jason was interested in her and had been interested in her for a long time now, and yet none of them saw fit to tell her. Great.

So Elizabeth was faced with this new information, and it was only too bad for her that she didn't know what to do with it.

Was she interested in Jason?

Well, sure, but in a vague, physical way.

After all, she had eyes. He was a tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty of a man. He was just so very pretty to look at, so long as he kept his damn mouth shut. But then again, wasn't that the case with most men?

He was of a good build with strong arms and a strong, well-muscled chest, and a narrow waist that tapered down to two lean but powerful legs. He was quiet but discerning, shrewd and unobtrusive. And just a little intimidating.

He kept things very close to the vest, too. That was how she'd gone for so long without even realizing that he was attracted to her. He never let things show, never tipped his hand, never fricking did _anything_. He was the strong and silent type, to be sure, and from what she heard from Sonny and the older bodyguards, he was a noble and just man.

So was she interested in him?

Yeah, but again, only physically.

She didn't know Jason Morgan very well. She didn't really know him at all. As far as she was concerned, he was just some guy that lived across the hall that happened to share meals with her twice a day. They talked and got face-time, sure, but she knew only the generalities. She knew he loved to ride, and that he was beyond irritated with the Quartermaines, and that he liked to be left alone and kept out of the public's eye. He liked beer, drank the occasional orange soda, loved to shoot pool, and had an unlikely soft spot for Spinelli.

That was about all she knew.

So now Elizabeth was stuck with a very difficult decision: to leave it alone, ignore the information she'd been given, and just interact with Jason as if she truly had no idea that he was attracted to her, or to act on it.

If she acted on it and became involved with a man that she was only attracted to physically and because she was engaged in some perverse contest with Spinelli…well, there were names for girls like that, and she didn't like those names.

If she didn't act on it and ignored it…would that even be possible? How could she do that? How could she un-know something like that? Things would just be awkward, and she knew that she wouldn't know what to say and that she'd bungle it all up somehow. That was what she did in these emotional situations: she bungled it up every damn time.

But if she acted on it _because _she was attracted physically to this man…was there anything wrong with that? After all, that was how she and Nikolas started. They had been friends for about three years and then one night, they slept together. She had liked it just fine because, for one thing, it felt pretty damn incredible, and for another, she knew Nikolas to be a good guy, one that was her friend and one that she could trust. And three years later, their relationship was the same. Sex hadn't messed anything up.

The Spinelli factor was what made it complicated. She could abandon her motives to torture him altogether…but again, she had to wonder if that were even possible. Wouldn't she be tempted to gloat? Even just a little? And wouldn't that defeat the whole purpose and earn her one of those horrible names for horrible girls?

Ugh.

The whole thing was just too confusing and too messy. And Elizabeth didn't like confusing _or _messy. She did whatever she did in life because it was fun and she enjoyed it. That's why she worked for Sonny, that's why she read, that's why she played around with her computer, that's why she hooked up with Nikolas now and then. She didn't feel it made her immoral if she chose to just do what she liked: after all, why not keep the complications of life at bay for as long as possible?

So it was decided: instead of sorting through all of this herself and coming to some sort of decision, she'd wait and see how it played out. That way, the ramifications would be easier, and if it all started with his motives, then she could stop worrying about earning one of those horrible names. She'd just wait it out and see what happened.

Simply put, she'd wait until Jason made the first move.

* * *

_One week later…_

The air-conditioning was out in Harborview Towers.

Something had burst in the basement and the central cooling unit had gone out. They wouldn't have even noticed it if Elizabeth hadn't burst into Sonny's penthouse after lunch ranting about it. So they had called the professionals and sent them downstairs, and it turned out that the whole thing had to be replaced. Sonny had put a rush on it, but that still meant that the AC was down until the following morning.

This, of course, meant that Elizabeth was an absolute wreck.

Sonny was fine; he just opened up all the windows, made himself some iced tea, and went about his business. Jason and Spinelli barely even noticed. In fact, they were both under the misconception for a little while that it was actually cooler than it was before. In any case, it made absolutely no difference to them.

Elizabeth was another story, and the guards had brought up some electrical fans from the storage unit downstairs to see if that would help. But since they weren't used very often, if at all, the fans were not in proper working order, and Elizabeth would just send them back down before they spit any more dust onto her carpeting.

So Jason decided to go out to the hardware store and purchase three electrical fans, which he then stacked up, one on top of the other, and carried up the elevator and across the hall and over to Penthouse VI. He knocked on the door by kicking his toe against the wood three times, and waited to be let in.

* * *

This was just about the grossest day of her life.

Her penthouse was a goddamn bayou. After the AC went out, she had kept her windows closed for as long as she possibly could just to keep the cold air circulating inside, and once that was a lost cause, she had been forced to open everything. Now, it was a swampland. The only breeze that blew outside was hot and sticky, thus causing her to become hot and sticky as well.

She had already taken five showers today, and was just coming downstairs after the sixth, and yet she still felt wet. It was just so humid that she didn't know what to do anymore. Her skin was dewy, her hands were clammy, and her hair was frizzing up like nobody's business. She wasn't comfortable in _anything _she wore and had finally been forced to change into a pair of little cotton shorts that she usually wore _under _a pair of light drawstring pants, and a little pink t-shirt. She was hot, sticky, tired, and cranky.

_This _was why she always kept the air-conditioning on.

"It's open," she called out when she heard a knock at the door. A pause, and then whoever it was knocked again.

"_Open_!"

Another knock.

"Oh, for God's sake," she huffed, stomping over. "What?"

"Brought you these," came a voice behind three stacked boxes, and Elizabeth moved aside quickly to let Jason in. "Thought you might need them."

"Fans?" she asked, shutting the door behind him. "New ones? Ones that won't wheeze and whir and then die after spraying dust all over my floor?"

"New ones," Jason nodded, dropping them on the floor by the couch. "They should work just fine."

"I'm ready to try just about anything at this point," she mumbled, swiping a loose tendril of hair away from her face. "God, this _heat_."

That would have been the perfect time to say something in response, but one could only say something if one was actually paying attention. As it was, Jason couldn't stop staring at Elizabeth to save his life, much less to form a coherent thought.

She stood in front of him in a pair of itty bitty shorts that he had most certainly _never _seen before – he would have remembered – and a small, thin t-shirt through which he could clearly see the outline of her bra. Her legs were all bare, smooth expanses of creamy skin, and her bare toes wriggled in the carpet. Her sleeves were short, letting him see the light dusting of freckles high on her arm, and her curly, wavy hair was pulled up in a casual bun.

Now he understood why she always kept the air-conditioning on: it was to keep him from constantly mentally undressing her.

Not that such a thing required much work on his part as it was.

And as it was, there was absolutely no way he was walking out of this penthouse of his own will. That part was pretty much set in stone at this point. After all, how could any man walk out on _that _and still call himself a man?

The best course of action would be to communicate with her on her level. Otherwise, she'd be ushering him out with a polite thank you soon enough, and that would do him no good. A verbal thank you was no fun at all.

So he had to get to her by talking to her in a language that she understood, in a manner that she responded to. It was something he had never done with any other woman but to be fair, he had never had to work this hard for any other woman. And he'd lived with Spinelli for so long that by now he accepted the fact that, for some reason or another, he would occasionally find himself doing things he never in a million years thought he'd do. With Spinelli – and now, with Elizabeth – that just seemed to come with the territory.

Now, all he had to do was bait her…

* * *

For some reason, she was mad.

Elizabeth had no idea why she was mad, or when she had gotten mad, or how she had gotten mad. All she knew was that she had gone from pleased and grateful to spitting mad at Jason Morgan and that the two of them were currently squaring off in her living room, standing toe-to-toe right by the couch.

Well, _he _was standing by the couch. She was standing _on _the couch, because he was about a foot taller than her and having to yell _up _at him made her feel inferior.

"Who the hell do you think you are-"

"I asked you a simple question," he fired back. "You had no right-"

"I can do what I want, when I want! And if that means putting a bug in your penthouse, tough shit!"

"-some kind of a joke, don't you? It's illegal!"

"Then get a lawyer! You still get off on yelling at girls, don't you, you insufferable putz! God! What do Sonny and the nerd _see _in you?"

"Don't bring Spinelli into this! You've been after him since day one, and it stops now."

"Oooh, big man, standing up for your pint-sized walking geek convention! That little nerd asked for it the second he-"

"-has never done _anything _to you, but you still have it out for him!"

"I don't have it out for anyone! I just want him to leave me alone! I want _you _to leave me alone! Better yet, I just want you both out of my life!"

And that was his cue. So far, Elizabeth had been giving as good as she got, and that was what Jason had been counting on. They were actually pretty evenly matched, the two of them, and neither one could give an inch to the other. Whatever he said, she turned right back on him, and vice versa. An eye for an eye, and all that. Their rhythm, that familiar tug-and-pull rhythm of theirs, kept them going steadily and they were neck-in-neck.

And the best way to win the race was to surprise her, to do something she never would have expected.

So Jason Morgan placed one hand on the back of her head, pulled her roughly to him, and crushed his lips to hers.


	17. Chapter 17

**Hack 17**

**(NC-17)**

Jason Morgan was kissing her.

That son of a _bitch_.

Elizabeth knew exactly what he was up to, even as his hard, hot mouth came down on hers and his fingers dove through her tangled, frizzy hair; even as he pulled her toward him with fierce possessiveness, as if nothing at that moment would have stopped him from doing so; even as…huh?

Oh, yeah.

He was kissing her for several reasons, none of which was to create that delicious, tingly warmth all up and down her spine. He was kissing her because (a) she had said something he couldn't refute or respond to, (b) he wanted to shut her up, and/or (c) because he knew that it was the last thing she was expecting, and that it would throw her for a loop and cause her to become a trembling, melting mess the second he pulled away.

Well, that son of a bitch was in for a surprise.

Elizabeth placed her hands on his lean waist and pulled, bringing him forward to connect with her from shoulder to thigh while simultaneously ramming her tongue into his throat.

That would teach him to mess with her.

She cracked one eye open just in time to see his dark brows jump in surprise, and then his tongue was stroking hers forcefully. This time, her brows jumped. That wasn't part of the plan; he wasn't supposed to _do _that.

Even if it did feel so damn good.

By now he was exploring her mouth, kissing her savagely. She still had her hands on his waist, and Elizabeth gripped him tightly, refusing to relinquish her hold. He was a powerful man, and even now he loomed over her, practically forcing her to bend backwards as he plundered her mouth. She liked having some kind of hold on him to keep him steady and in her grasp.

His thumb stroked the line of her jaw and his fingers feathered over the sensitive skin of her neck, causing Elizabeth to shiver. Jason chuckled against her mouth and pulled her in again, nipping at her plush lower lip.

Well, this wasn't fair. No matter how he nipped and stroked, it still wasn't fair. He wasn't supposed to have the upper hand here.

And so to remedy that unfortunate lapse of power, Elizabeth ground her hips into his and lifted one hand to his sandy locks in order to rake her nails over his scalp. Ha. That would show him, the jerk.

Jason actually groaned into her mouth, much to Elizabeth's surprise, and she could feel his heart thumping in his chest. And as she settled her hand on his shirt, venturing up from the waistband of his jeans, she found that the skin underneath was hot to her gentle touch.

It was her turn to shiver and bite back a groan when Jason relinquished her cheek and skimmed one hand boldly up from the back of her knee to her thigh. It was a possessive gesture, and very hungry, and something inside of her turned molten and melted away when he squeezed the supple muscle of her thigh. So much for her theory that he was a prude. He repeated the motion, stroking the sensitive area in a smooth, strong movement, and Elizabeth actually had to clutch at his shirt and hair to keep herself steady.

But he seemed to like the tugging and the friction, because that only encouraged and excited him. Well, that was no good. Elizabeth pulled her lips away from his, framing his face with her hands when he tried to pull her back into a kiss.

She found herself staring at him, straight into his deep cerulean eyes, their faces separated by a scant distance. It was an audacious thing to do, and quite dangerous in the contexts of the little game they'd made for themselves, but those damn eyes that she had often admired had a peculiar way of drawing her in.

Her silence and lack of movement puzzled Jason, and she could see his confusion clearly. And just before the moment could get awkward, Elizabeth arched a brow and grasped the edge of his t-shirt. Jason looked down in surprise as she started to tug it up, and only barely managed to get his arms up in time as Elizabeth whisked it over his head.

She smiled, satisfied, and took a moment to survey the results of her work. There had never been any doubt in her mind that Jason was incredibly fit, and she had the proof right under her palms. He was strong and brawny – and _tanned _– and his muscles rippled under her fingers as he latched onto her waist and pulled her against him once more.

That was much better.

His lips didn't meet her mouth this time; instead, he surprised her by going right for the spot under her ear. Her nails dug into his shoulders as Jason sucked hard on the pale flesh, pulling back just for a second to survey the mark he'd left. And then he was against her again, letting her press up against him from chest to knee as he began to push her back down and onto the couch.

Elizabeth hadn't meant to let him do that, but her head was still whirling from the effects of whatever it was that he was doing to her neck that made fire dance across her skin like that. In fact, the brunette hadn't really planned any of this, even though she had let herself decide after a casual thought on the matter that if their make-out session went this far, she'd like to be on top if that were at all possible.

But Jason had no intention of letting her do that as he moved with her on the couch, his jean-clad leg sliding between hers as she found herself pushed up into the corner of the sofa. Her fingers skittered along his side, playing with the line of his boxers just at the waistband of his jeans, before her hands moved upwards over his back, caressing the muscles in long, strong strokes.

Jason growled and ran a hand through her hair, freeing it from the casual knot she had it up in, and let his fingers get tangled up in her curls. Far from self-conscious, Elizabeth tossed her chestnut waves over her shoulder and arched a brow playfully at him before pulling him down to her again. Jason skimmed a hand boldly up her leg, his thumb tracing a straight line up her inner thigh, and stopped just under her little shorts.

Elizabeth bit her lip, and the naughty gesture of things to come caused her hips to involuntarily buck up off the couch and grind against his. Well, that wouldn't do. He had another thing coming if he thought he could get away with that.

Jason was in the process of wondering what she would do if he were to skim his hand up and under her t-shirt to cup her when the little brunette flicked open the snap of his jeans. She did it so quickly, too, that he didn't even see it coming. One second her hands were exploring his back and the next thing he knew, she was lowering his zipper. She was a tricksy one.

Ah, shit, now he was thinking about Spinelli's damn Ring Lord cartoons.

But thankfully, not for long. Because that was when Elizabeth really got her hands on him. She had felt the light pressure of him low against her belly earlier when he had pulled her into him, and wasn't about to give up on that. She raked her nails lightly over his boxers, making him squirm above her, and then did it again just for added torture.

_That _was how to do it, all right.

But Jason wasn't about to let her win so easily. He had bedded enough women to know how to take control of situations like these, after all. Making good on his thoughts from earlier, he slipped a rough, callused hand under the soft cotton of her pink t-shirt and rested his palm lightly on her stomach. The flat muscles quivered under his hand, a dead giveaway to her reaction to him no matter how the brunette tried to hide it. Oh, he had her, all right.

His hand moved upward slowly, and his palm feathered over her skin gently. Elizabeth bit her lip and stared into his eyes, as if hypnotized, and Jason lightly brushed his lips over hers. He tugged on her lower one with his teeth, freeing it from her teeth, and then pressed his mouth against hers at the same time that his hand closed around her breast.

Elizabeth wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, trapping his hand right where it was as. She kissed him deeply and snaked one leg around his until they were fairly tangled up on her couch. Their movements pulled his unbuttoned pants lower and lower until they were halfway down his thigh. It was then that Jason noticed the constricting situation, and he pulled away from her long enough to unburden himself of the heavy denim.

When he came to her again, Jason easily slipped his hand under her shirt and resumed his exploration at about the same time that Elizabeth decided her best option was to settle her hands on his backside and dig her nails into his firm muscles. She laughed when he jumped slightly and swore, but Jason paid her back for the little stunt by relieving her of her shirt.

The fact that she wasn't embarrassed by her sudden state of partial undress surprised him; the fact that she had been hiding a traffic-stopping figure and a set of perfect breasts under all those layers of hers genuinely floored him. And she seemed to know it, too.

With a sly smirk, she took his hand and brought it to her body, placing it just under the swell of her left breast as she captured his lips in another searing kiss. And of course, Jason knew how to take it from there despite the brief stall.

He slipped one hand under her waist and helped her to sit up, kissing her all the while. Right away, he had been able to tell that she was a girl that liked to be kissed. She had a great mouth for it, after all, so how could he not oblige?

Elizabeth's hands were on his neck, and he was sure she could feel his pulse jumping under her palm. She kept a hold on him as she straightened into a sitting position, curled up in his lap now, and then let her fingers trail lightly down over his chest. But Jason wasn't having any of that. He pulled her against him hard, anxious to feel her pressed against his chest, and leaned back on the armrest to let her straddle him.

Well, climbing on top had been easier than expected. Elizabeth chuckled to herself as she braced her hands on his shoulders, pushing him down, and slanted her mouth over his. Her fat waves tumbled over her shoulder and tickled his chest, causing Jason to squirm between her thighs. But Elizabeth was enjoying his unease too much to alleviate it, and so she tossed her hair over her other shoulder and smirked at his frustrated groan.

Elizabeth lowered her head enough to tickle his lips with hers, and it was her turn to groan when Jason cupped her backside with both of his large hands and used his hold to maneuver her forward. She surged up, her mouth pressed hard now against his, and Jason held her there as he took his time exploring her mouth once more.

She was contemplating punishing him for his impertinence but stalled too long – long enough for him to decide that she was still grossly overdressed. He tugged on her shorts, bringing down her white bikini bottom briefs with them, and refused to relent until she climbed partly off of him and kicked them to the floor.

After that, there was no way she wouldn't force him to reciprocate. So Jason hoisted his hips up off the couch, taking her for a little ride while doing so, and managed to relieve himself of his boxers. Elizabeth kissed her way down his neck as he reached to the floor for his jeans, frantically groping for his wallet, and she murmured her approval into his ear when he came up with the protection.

Though she had been counting on maintaining her strategic position on top of him, Jason had other ideas and Elizabeth soon found herself displaced. Her shoulder blades pressed down into the cushion with the weight of him on top of her, and try as she would she just couldn't flip Jason over. He smirked at her attempts and kissed her soundly by way of appeasement but remained smugly unrepentant, which irritated her because that was how _she _usually was during sex.

He loomed over her, bracing his weight on one hand for a moment before joining her again, and Elizabeth was enjoying the feel of him in her mouth when Jason bent her leg at the knee and smoothly pushed forward. She nearly bit down on his tongue at the contact but settled for digging her nails into his shoulder blades.

Jason seemed to understand and held still for a moment, giving her enough time to adjust. And when she became restless underneath him, he picked up the pace as smoothly as before and rocked against her. Sweat made their skin stick together, and Elizabeth's breath was moist against Jason's neck. He turned his face and nibbled on her lower lip, nudging her nose with his as she ran her nails down his back. She smoothed a palm upward over the pink scratch marks and clung to him when he shuddered and tried to pick up the pace.

The transition was all she needed to catch him off guard, and Elizabeth set thing straight by pulling him onto his side. She struggled out from under him and braced her forearm on his chest, trying to pin him down. But Jason wasn't having any of it and grabbed her hips in an attempt to hold her still.

So Elizabeth did what any woman in her position – literally – would have done and swiveled her hips to distract him, grinding her body against his. Jason let out a dark string of curse words, his voice muffled by one of her green throw pillows, and by the time he was ready to make his second attempt it was too late for both of them.

He knew exactly when she hit her limit because her grip on his bicep suddenly became almost unbearably tight. It became lax almost as quickly and Elizabeth began to slump into him at about the exact time that he hit. Her release had triggered his and Jason barely managed to secure her in his arms before his hips bucked up off the couch and the white pinprick in the distance exploded to eclipse his vision.

* * *

Elizabeth lightly drummed her fingers against Jason's chest, wondering just how long she was required to lay curled up against his side before she could get up. For his part, Jason was either in a meditative trance…or wondering the exact same thing as he gently brushed his fingertips up and down her arm.

With a sigh, Elizabeth decided that enough was enough and that there was no point in extending this post-coital snuggle. She propped herself up onto her elbow and frowned down at him, brushing her damp bangs out of her face.

"We shouldn't have done that."

The corners of his mouth pinched down and Jason stared at her, absently thinking that he preferred the silence to this. They had just had explosive sex – spontaneously, no less – and _that _was the first thing she could think to say?

Damn, he knew there was a reason that she irritated him beyond belief.

Of course, he had discovered great difficulty recalling that reason when she was straddling his waist and trying to get his boxers off. In fact, he had discovered great difficulty recalling _anything _when faced with her vibrant self-confidence in this grittiest of situations.

"What?"

She wrinkled her nose and continued to drum her fingers against his chest. Jason didn't have the heart to tell her to stop, even as he wondered just _why _the hell he found that simple motion so oddly arousing. "We shouldn't have done that."

Well, that didn't help him any. He wanted an explanation, not a verbatim repetition. She was so damn literal sometimes. "Huh?"

"It's too hot and sticky to do something so…hot and sticky," she tried to explain.

His features relaxed and Jason laughed at that, using his free arm to roughly pull her down against him again. "That's why I brought you those fans."

"Yeah, but you didn't put them _up_," Elizabeth pointed out. "They're still in their boxes."

"You can handle that, right?" Jason teased, rubbing her shoulder and pausing to peel her damp curls away. "You don't need my help."

The evasive maneuver earned him a hard jab in the ribs, and Jason laughed around a groan. Elizabeth, however, wasn't so amused. "Jason! I don't want to put up three fans all by myself. I want _you _to do it for me."

"Fine, I'll send Spinelli over later," he grinned, pleased when she accepted the proposition and settled down against him again. "That work for you?"

"Perfectly." With her cheek pressed flat against his chest, Elizabeth seemed content to just lay still for a moment. And then, inevitably, something else occurred to her and she was on the move again, once more propping herself up on her elbow so that she could peer down at him. "Hey. Don't tell Nerd about what just happened."

Jason understood this time without her having to explain. "Didn't plan on it."

She relaxed, but then poked him again a second later. "And don't tell anyone else, okay? It reflects poorly on me."

The remark shocked him and Jason stared at her for a good few seconds before he realized that she was teasing. Muttering something obscene under his breath, he grabbed her waist and flipped them over so that she was pinned, kicking and squealing with excitement, under his chest.

"You wanna repeat that?"

"No," she grinned, pushing his shoulders in an attempt to free herself.

Jason shrugged and held her in place as he deliberately settled his hips over hers and lowered his mouth to hers. "Then I'm just going to have to repeat _this_…"

* * *

_Almost one hour later…_

He paused while pulling his t-shirt right-side-out just to watch her wiggle back into her underwear and shorts. Fully dressed now, Elizabeth tossed her damp hair over her shoulder and crossed her arms over her chest, regarding him seriously now.

"What?"

"What?"

"Stop looking at me like that," she replied, arching a brow defensively. "You look like you want to say something, so say it."

She wasn't going to make it that easy for him, was she? He couldn't really say what he wanted to say…could he? Glancing around the empty penthouse, Jason cleared his throat. "Uh…is there any chance of this happening again?"

His earnest question caused her to smile, and then that smile broadened into a grin, and before long, the little brunette was actually _laughing _at him. "Ja-son."

"I'm serious," he defended himself despite feeling a little ridiculous at having to ask. "We didn't plan on – and we're not telling any – and it's not like…"

He closed his eyes and let out a breath. What was it about the damn woman that made him feel like an awkward teenager all over again? Though the accident had wiped those embarrassing memories away, he was getting a double dose this go-around. "What are we going to do about what just happened?"

She leaned back against the armrest and tugged on her shorts, which were beginning to ride up a little. "What do you want to do?"

Jason rolled his eyes and sat down on the other armrest, making it very clear that he had no intention of answering her ridiculous deflection. But as the seconds ticked by, she continued to stare at him from her end of the couch, openly and honestly, as if she genuinely expected a response of the same kind, and Jason finally just sighed and answered.

"I _want _to do this again."

Yeah, that wasn't going to go over well.

But to his surprise, Elizabeth didn't laugh, make fun of him, get embarrassed, or become angry. She just shrugged and folded her hands together between her knees. "Okay. Whatever."

While he liked the "okay" part a whole lot, Jason wasn't sure what he was supposed to make of the second word. It was hardly flattering, at any rate. "What?"

"Well, there's no point in being weird about it," she had the sense to point out. "We're both adults, after all. And it's nothing to be ashamed of."

Damn it, she was speaking plainly and clearly, but he still had no idea what the hell she was saying. "So you mean…"

"Let's just take it as it comes," Elizabeth suggested. "I mean, I'm not looking for anything serious, _you're_ not looking for anything serious, and there's nothing wrong with just having some fun once in a while. Who says we have to make a big thing about it?"

Oh, this was way too good to be true. Jason arched a brow and squinted at the young woman. "So you're saying…"

She rolled her eyes and chuckled at his inability to grasp her meaning. "At the risk of sounding crude – but getting through to you – do you want this to be a casual, no emotional commitment, no strings attached thing or not?"

His brows jumped and once again, Jason just could not believe his good luck. "I…uh, yeah, sure."

"Okay," she beamed, pleased that they had come to an agreement. "But I do have some rules…strings, if you will."

Ah, shit. Here it came. Jason let out a beleaguered sigh and shifted on the armrest. She probably had a million rules about when they could see each other and what he could do and what he was supposed to say and so on. She'd want him to take her out to dinner once a week and spend some time just _cuddling _or whatever the hell it was women wanted to do when they didn't want to have sex, and-

"First, I don't do the cute, cuddly, bunny-kiss PDA crap so if you're in the mood for that, look elsewhere." She regarded him seriously and began to tick her list off on her fingers.

"Second, don't call me your 'girlfriend;' that's a stupid word. Third, I don't _date _– we're not going to enjoy some cozy, candlelit dinner at whatever restaurant you manage to drag your knuckles into. Fourth, I don't hold hands: that's germy. Fifth, I don't do romantic: again, if you want flowers and poetry and the June Cleaver routine, go talk to Spinelli; I'm sure he'd put on an apron and a string of pearls if you told him you were into that sort of thing. Sixth, I don't do sexy – I will not wear pinchy, sheer, tight lingerie or six-inch high spiked heels just so you can drool at the mouth. And finally, seventh, I can't deal with jealous or clingy or needy. I just can't. It's disgusting."

Satisfied, she drummed her toes on the couch cushion and nodded at him. "That's about it."

Jason could only stare back at her, his jaw slack.

Holy shit, he'd hit the jackpot.

She didn't expect _anything _from him. It was perfect!

Of course, he couldn't let her know he thought that.

"I've got a few rules, too," he declared, crossing his arms over his chest. "I'm not going to hang around your penthouse for a long time whenever we see each other."

"You have a lot of work at the warehouse and other stuff to do – I get that," she nodded, completely unconcerned and unruffled.

"I won't stop going to Jake's and drinking and shooting pool."

Her lips curved upward in a sly smirk. "I wasn't planning on stopping, either."

"We're not going to sit around and _talk_," he continued, emphasizing the last word. God, he hated it when women wanted to _talk_. "I don't talk about my problems in general, and definitely not in bed."

She shrugged. "Who cares? Less whining for me to listen to. Anything else?"

He squared his jaw and raised his chin a notch. "And I don't share."

This one threw her, and he could immediately see that Elizabeth wasn't following. "What?"

Jason took three large, deliberate steps over to her side of the couch and looked directly into her eyes. "I. Don't. Share."

Eyeing the scant distance between them, Elizabeth began to nibble on her lower lip. "What do you mean?"

Jason tilted his head, his gaze still intense. "If you're with me, you're not with anyone else."

And certainly not with Nikolas, that asshole.

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed dangerously. "You want exclusivity?"

He nodded without missing a beat. "Yeah."

She was still suspicious. "And does that work both ways?"

He paused for a mere second before repeating his previous answer. "Yeah, it does."

The brunette pursed her lips thoughtfully. "I'll think about it and get back to you." But when Jason's eyes widened in shock, she found that she couldn't quite contain her cheeky, teasing grin. "Kidding, kidding. Fine, whatever. Are we done?"

Jason shrugged and took a step back. "That's it for me."

"Okay," she replied happily, hopping off the couch. "Glad we cleared all that up. You can see yourself out, right? I have to go upstairs for something. Good talk, Jason."

She was already halfway up the stairs when Jason pulled the door open and stepped out into the hallway, extremely pleased with their new arrangement. "Yeah, see you later."


	18. Chapter 18

**Hack 18**

There was a reason that Jake's was a favorite haunt of hers. There were certain things there that she could always count on. There was the privacy; there was the comfortable, low-key, informal atmosphere that had only been enhanced when Coleman bought the joint; there was the excellent alcohol (after the first time she caught him and threatened to have Sonny send him packing, Coleman had never watered her drinks down again); there was the good food (cheese-fries and buffalo wings; who could go wrong with those?); and, of course, there was the sublime company.

"Ho! Bullseye!" Ritchie cheered after he managed to send his dart right into the glossy 8x10 Scott's right eye. "Take that, D.A. Baldwin. Okay, I pick…Toothpick. Take two shots of tequila."

"Aw, damn it," she cursed, already waving at Stan to pass the bottle over. "Okay, hold on, who has the salt? I'm not drinking my damn tequila without the salt!"

"That's such a girly way to do it," Milo snorted, tossing her the shaker. "Drink it like a man, Default."

"Don't have to," she snipped, licking her hand and then applying salt. "Thankfully, I was blessed with two X chromosomes, which is why all you nerds spoil me so damn bad. Okay, two shots, let's do this. Nikolas, got the limes?"

"Waiting at your command," he smirked, holding up the quartered limes. Still chuckling, he elbowed Stan. "How much do you want bet that these two send her over the edge?"

But Stan shook his head. "I think she's got at least two more after this before she loses it completely and we have to take her home in a wheelbarrow."

"Oh, I remember that. What an excellent New Year's that was."

"Drink! Drink! Drink!" the guards cheered as Elizabeth licked her hand, slammed down the shot, and sucked on the lime. It took her a brief moment to shake it off, and then she was reaching for the second one to repeat the procedure.

"Oh, you are going _down_, Bitchie," she growled, her trembling finger pointed in the laughing guard's direction. "You know, if we had a blown-up poster of Baldwin, I'd go straight for the nards and make you down that whole bottle."

"Tough talk, Toothpick," Max laughed as he put the dart in her hand. "Your turn. And no pretending to accidentally whip it in Ritchie's direction this time. Play an honest game for once."

She laughed and tried to steady her hand long enough to take aim. "You're all nerds. Okay, here goes…"

Johnny leaned back on the two rear legs of his chair and squinted at the bar. "Hey, isn't that Jason with Spaghetti?"

"Yes! On the nose!"

"That's the nostril, idiot, it doesn't count."

"It does, too."

"Sorry, Toothpick," Max shrugged. He was the official keeper of all the rules of this little drinking game, and was frequently called up as the umpire whenever Elizabeth tried to cheat. "Nostril does not count as the nose. Take a shot. Who's next?"

"It's me," Johnny spoke up, setting his chair right and standing up. "Hold on for a minute, though – I'm going to go say hey to the Boss Man."

"Forget him," Elizabeth snorted, grabbing hold of his elbow and reeling the tall Irishman back. "He's just going to grunt and sign Apple Apple Drink Cup. Let's finish the game – the D.A.'s just asking for it in the left eye."

Johnny snickered and took the dart she handed him. "Okay, here goes nothing…Aw, damn!"

"Take a shot!" Stan cheered, passing him the tequila. Johnny grimaced and took a swig right out of the bottle. "Okay, who's next?"

"That would be Milo and Nikolas, but they both hit the background and lost a turn, so it's…Ritchie again." Elizabeth smiled wickedly at her friend as he reached for his dart. Behind her, Jason and Spinelli were setting up at a pool table and chalking up their cues on the other side of the room.

"You're going down, Ritchie," Elizabeth taunted, hopping up onto the table that the guard stood by so she could heckle him right in his ear. "You're gonna miss, you're gonna misssssssssss."

"Not at all, Toothpick," the guard scoffed, steadying his hand and aiming for the other eye. "I'm going to have you taking two more shots, and you'll be over the moon before you know it."

"Hey, Jason and Spaghetti are playing pool," Max noted. "Look at that – the kid isn't half bad. You think Jason taught him?"

"Max, trying to concentrate here, big guy," Ritchie tossed over his shoulder. "Okay…"

"I wouldn't be surprised if Jason _has _given Spaghetti some lessons," Nikolas mused, watching the two men play. "He's taken to him very well, that much is clear. Rather like an older brother, don't you think?"

"I'd say that's fair," Johnny nodded. "But whatever it is, he's sure different from the Jason I remember. How about it, Max?"

Max nodded along. "Oh, yeah. Before, he was completely focused on Sonny and the job, and in his free time he just drank and drove around on his bike and whored it up. Just like any normal guy, you know? But ever since he came back…I don't know, it just seems like he's so grown-up now. And he's a year younger than me!"

"Guys!" Ritchie exploded, turning around to glare at the whole lot of them. "Can we keep from talking about the Boss for one second just so I can actually do this?"

Elizabeth waited until Ritchie had finally set his aim before speaking. "I slept with him two nights ago."

The results were perfect. Johnny, who had been leaning on the back legs of his chair, toppled to the floor; Nikolas, who had been pouring another shot, sloshed some tequila onto his 3,500 pants; Max started coughing and couldn't stop; and the others stared at her as if she'd lost her damn mind.

That wasn't the perfect part, though. The perfect part was that Ritchie had been in the process of drawing back and releasing the dart, and her little kiss-and-tell moment sent his dart spiraling straight into the D.A.'s hideous tie.

"Whoo! Ritchie has to take a shot! And now it's my turn!"

But the men weren't quite so ready to move on, least of all Nikolas, who wasn't sure how he felt about this new liaison. "You did _what_?"

"Slept with him," came the simple answer as the brunette selected a dart. "Milo, get your fat head out of the way or I'll end up taking out _your _eye instead of Scottie Too Hottie's."

Nikolas and Stan exchanged panicked looks. "But _why_?"

Elizabeth shrugged, the tip of her tongue poking out between her lips as she concentrated on lining up the dart with the D.A.'s uninjured eye. "He was being a real asshole, so I just slept with him. I was really mad at the time, and somehow that made sense."

"Well, I guess that _kind _of makes sense," she heard Milo say to Max and Johnny after a brief pause. "I mean, God knows I've used that technique to score – dozens of times."

"Oh, Milo, no one here believes for a second that you've scored dozens of times," Johnny informed him kindly. "But about them – I guess it was inevitable. Right?"

Max was nodding slowly. "Yeah, the Boss Man always gets what he wants."

"Why he wanted Default over there, I've got _no _clue," Ritchie replied, throwing his hands up in the air. "Give that tequila here."

"So is _that _why you were dodging me when I asked if you wanted to hang out last night?" Nikolas asked, placing a hand on his hips. The other guards, who were well aware of the nature of the Prince's relationship with Elizabeth, barely batted a lash.

The brunette shrugged and used her hand to steady her wrist. "Jason says he doesn't share."

"He _said _that?" Stan laughed, slumping against a table. "Man, that's so _cheesy_."

Nikolas had to laugh along as well, even though her statement was troubling. "Elizabeth, have I ever said anything that cheesy to you in all the time we've known each other?"

She stopped aiming to turn around and flash him a quick grin. "You told me that you'd put a diamond tiara on my head and an emerald the size of a walnut on my ring finger if you were a one-woman man."

The bodyguards laughed when the Prince suddenly colored, and the commotion was enough to draw vaguely curious looks from Jason and Spinelli all the way across the room.

"You _said _that?" Ritchie snorted, partly choking on the tequila because he was laughing too hard. "I just lost about half my respect for you."

"I had gotten into Uncle's cognac and drank too much for my own good," the Prince muttered, snatching the tequila away from Ritchie.

"No, he didn't," Elizabeth mouthed to the rest, winking at Nikolas when he tossed a used lime at her. "Okay, now shut up and let me aim. Time to take down the Dastardly D.A."

"Time to what, now?"

Milo's eyes widened when he saw who had just sauntered up behind Elizabeth, and being the closest to the dartboard, he quickly grabbed Scott Baldwin's picture and tore it down off the board. The movement caught the interloper's attention, and Max discreetly took the picture from his brother and held it behind his back.

"Oh, hello, Lieutenant," Elizabeth preened. She was still holding the dart set to aim, and it was now pointing squarely at Taggert's nose. "What brings you to Jake's? Our boys in blue suddenly craving chili cheese fries?"

He ignored her and looked around at the guards. "All the usual suspects…So tell me, Miss _Webber_, what are all of you doing here?"

He loved emphasizing her last name because it reminded her – as if she could ever forget – that he was on excellent terms with her grandparents and still considered Sonny Corinthos a thief for taking the youngest Webber child away from her real family.

"Just having some fun," the brunette grinned, too loopy for the tequila to let him get to her. "You remember what that's like, don't you, Lieutenant?"

"You seem to be having a _lot _of fun," Taggert murmured, picking up the almost empty bottle of tequila. "Yeah, you've got yourselves a little game going, huh?"

Johnny gestured to the dartboard. "We do what we can – just to keep things interesting, you know."

Taggert glared at him, then turned back to Elizabeth. "Miss _Webber_, are you old enough for this game? Mind showing me some I.D.?"

This irritated Ritchie. "Get off it, Lieutenant," he snarled. "You know she's over the legal age."

"I'll know for sure once I see some I.D.," he smiled, putting a hand on the small of Elizabeth's waist and leading her a step away from her volatile friends. Johnny started to get up from his seat, but the brunette sent him a look that had him reluctantly sitting down again. "Got your little purse handy, Miss Webber?"

Elizabeth tossed her hair over her shoulder and reached into her back pocket to pull out of her license. Taggert frequently harassed her when she was at Jake's, so she made a habit of carrying it on her person. "Here you go, Lieutenant. But you really should know off-hand that I'm over twenty-one. Sonny and I invited you to the birthday party, after all, didn't we? Don't you remember? We had a pony and everything."

Taggert glared at her and made a show of inspecting the card. "Impressive work here, Miss Webber. Says you've been twenty-one for several months now. Although this _could _be just another false document that your _guardian _dummied up for you."

This time, the tequila alone couldn't moderate her anger, and Elizabeth snatched the license from him and tucked it back into her pocket. "And I'm sure your new promotion to Lieutenant _could _have something to do with the fact that you're one of the few men stupid enough to do D.A. Baldwin's dirty work. How about it, Taggert? You actually willing to stake your integrity on a corrupt sleazeball like that?"

"Manners, manners, Anger Girl," Taggert soothed. "Didn't Mister Corinthos teach you anything? I mean, besides the fine art of aiding and abetting?"

She might have actually shoved the guy had Jason not appeared just then and used his pool cue to insinuate himself quite cleverly between her and Taggert. He looked down at her, clearly concerned, and then glanced indifferently at the lieutenant. "Problem here?"

"Oh, isn't this nice?" Taggert smiled. "Anger Boy and Anger Girl. Like the Wonder Twins. I bet you watched those cartoons when you were a little girl, Miss Webber. Remember them at all?"

It was a low blow and Elizabeth surged against Jason's arm, trying to make contact with the insufferable man. "You miserable son of a-"

"What are you doing here, Taggert?" Jason asked, his voice smooth and unconcerned even as he tried to hold Elizabeth back. "I'm sure someone's double-parked on Elm Street. That's your collar right there, isn't it?"

Taggert glared daggers at his old foe, and Elizabeth would have used the opportunity to try to get at him again had Spinelli not wandered up just then and looked around at the group clustered around the dartboard.

"And who's this?" Taggert wanted to know. "Another lackey? Hey, Anger Boy, where do you keep getting those? I only ask because I could use a couple down at the office – good help is so hard to find these days."

Spinelli smirked at the scrap of glossy photo paper still pinned to the dartboard, and then extended his hand. "Greetings, Churlish One. I am Damien Spinelli, the Jackal of Cyberspace. It's nice to meet you."

Taggert muttered something and reluctantly shook his hand, not used to having to engage in such civilities with his nemeses.

"I'm kinda new to town, and I don't know many people," Spinelli continued, drawing confused looks from Jason and Elizabeth. "…You wouldn't happen to have an 8x10 of yourself that I could use solely for my reference, would you?"

Realizing that they had been caught at their game by one of their former targets, the guards and Elizabeth burst out laughing. The extremely rare display of mirth from the normally stoic Corinthos camp bewildered Taggert, and he wrenched his hand away from Spinelli's and withdrew from the group.

"You take care, Miss _Webber_," he made sure to say once he was a safe distance away by the door. "Stay out of trouble. You know how your grandparents worry."

Muttering something obscene under her breath, Elizabeth took quick aim and hurled the dart in the Lieutenant's direction. Taggert whirled around when he heard something behind him and found a dart quivering in the doorframe just next to his head.

Elizabeth shrugged when he turned around and glared at her. "Oops. I missed."

Taggert was not amused. "I could charge you with assaulting an officer of the law right there."

The brunette, however, was not concerned. "Fine. Then I'll charge you with sexual harassment or assault for when you touched my ass in front of this fine group of witnesses."

While Jason could only gape at her, the guards and Nikolas sprang into action.

"That is indeed exactly what I saw happen on the night of the twenty-fourth at Jake's Bar & Billiards."

"Yeah, he totally groped her."

"His fingers were really digging, there."

"Isn't there some type of list that all you perverts are supposed to be on?"

"It's a cute little ass, so really, who could blame you? Unfortunately, that won't hold up as a valid argument in your defense."

Taggert snarled at the group and whirled on his heel, quickly exiting the bar. It was no use – or fun – going after Webber when all of her new friends were around. The sad part was that he had actually cared about the girl once. She used to serve him coffee every morning at Kelly's, and she'd stand around and chat with him and fill him in on all the gossip at the diner. He visited her several times a week in the hospital after her accident, and he had done what he could to help her through it and remember her family. But she had chosen Sonny Corinthos over her own blood despite everything, and so as far as he was concerned, she had made her own bed.

"What an ass."

"You said it," Elizabeth muttered, dropping an arm casually on Spinelli's shoulder. "The guy's a total waste of space and he basically lives to harass Sonny. If he ever bothers you, just get away from him. It's not even worth it. Hey, Ritchie, give me that dart – it's still my turn."

But her friend smiled slyly. "Sorry, no can do. You missed Baldwin altogether and hit outside the area of the picture. That means you have to do _three _shots."

Elizabeth's jaw dropped. "But that didn't count! I was aiming straight for Baldwin's eye when Taggert came – if I hadn't whipped it at his cue-ball head, you _know _I would have at least hit the D.A. somewhere in the face."

"This is such a healthy game you've all got going on here," Spinelli noted.

"Doesn't count."

"Does, too."

"Sorry – you lose. Three shots, Default."

"MAX!"

"Sorry," the guard shrugged. "We go by the dart – once the dart has been selected, it is that dart and only that dart that can be in play. You have to take three shots, Toothpick."

Elizabeth clapped a hand to her forehead. "Son of a _bitch_."

* * *

Sonny was still out attending an informal meeting with some of his associates by the time the guards, Jason, Elizabeth, and Spinelli returned to Harborview. The brunette was completely plastered and much to Spinelli's surprise, she was a rather calm and quiet drunk. She teetered and tottered this way and that, but she seemed very content in general and didn't even respond to his barbs and insults. In fact, she didn't even seem to know where he was standing relative to her position, anyway.

She was half-asleep by the time the car pulled up in the garage, and even though she was prepared to wake up and toddle up to the elevator, Jason had insisted on carrying her. Naturally, this amused the guards beyond belief but they, too, realized the importance of keeping quiet about the situation in front of Spinelli.

After all, the poor little nerd's world would be turned upside down if he found out that his mentor was in bed with the competition.

By the time the elevator climbed fifteen stories up to their floor, Elizabeth was fast asleep with her head tucked into Jason's neck. Max held the door and the enforcer stepped out, heading straight for her penthouse. Spinelli said goodnight and entered his, more than ready to change into his pajamas and hit the hay.

Milo unlocked the door to Penthouse VI and Jason quickly entered and headed straight for the stairs. It didn't take him long to find her bedroom and he gently deposited her on the bed. After removing her shoes, socks, light sweater and jeans, he tucked her in under the sheets and left, not wanting to add on to any suspicions that his guards might hold regarding him and Elizabeth.

Max and Milo were chatting about something in the hall but quickly sobered up when their boss emerged.

"You guys are on duty tonight?" he asked incredulously, looking back and forth between the two brothers. They had absolutely no business drinking if they had intended to come back and work.

Thankfully, they shook their heads. "No, it's Trevor and Marco tonight – that's why they didn't come with us. But we thought we'd stick around until Sonny came home, and then head back."

"That's fine," Jason told them as he turned around and headed for Sonny's. "I'm waiting for him, too. Come on in."

In truth, he didn't mind hanging out with the bodyguards. He had known Max from before he left, and from what he could tell Milo seemed to be a pretty decent guy. And they were all really good friends with Elizabeth, so he'd be seeing a lot of them.

"Scotch or beer?"

"Water's fine for me," Milo piped up.

"Beer."

Jason served them their drinks and took an extra bottle for himself before taking a seat on the couch. Max and Milo did the same out of habit; since they spent more time with Sonny than any of the other guards except for Johnny, they liked to wait for him if he was ever out late meeting with business partners. Then they'd get a jump-start on knowing what they were responsible for the next day, and they could leave and go back to their own apartment.

But as it was, it was kind of awkward sitting around with Jason, especially after they had only just learned that he was involved with a close friend of theirs. Milo respected Jason, but only because he had to; he wasn't too fond of him otherwise. Max, however, knew Jason for a long time and was familiar with his behavior. But both brothers now felt something strange burdening their relationship with their boss given that he was sleeping with Elizabeth.

But, of course, they couldn't let him know that.

So they sat around and made small talk and drank. Jason didn't seem to pick up on anything, and Max and Milo were both careful about what they said. For his part, Max wasn't too sure that this was going to work. Elizabeth and Jason, despite being very similar, were different as well and not only in terms of age. He just didn't see this ending well, and he wasn't looking forward to having to deal with the fallout.

Milo, on the other hand, spent most of the time trying to figure out just what it was that made Jason such a babe magnet, and how he could possibly learn a few tricks of the trade from him. But just when he was beginning to think he could learn a thing or two from the enforcer, the lesson was interrupted.

"Jason, thank God," Sonny muttered as he rushed into the penthouse. Francis was the one who had quickly opened the door and now the driver scanned the hallway and closed it securely behind them. "Saves me a trip."

The guards and Jason were on their feet the second the mobster entered, less as a sign of respect and more because Sonny looked terrible. He was terribly pale and appeared agitated, and his obsidian eyes darted around the room.

"What the hell happened?"

"Someone took shots at us," Francis explained quickly, effectively shutting all three men up. "Mister Corinthos was having dinner at the Locust Tree with a few associates. I brought the car around to the front and got out to meet him, and that's when shots were fired, just as we were coming down the stairs. This was no accident."

"I want this to be handled," Sonny growled, whipping off his gloves and slapping them onto the table. "Tonight's meeting wasn't even a crucial one – we barely discussed business. I don't want to wait and see what happens the next time the Families call a meeting. This gets taken care of. Where's Elizabeth?"

Jason and Max exchanged looks, and the enforcer cleared his throat. "She's asleep."

Sonny scrubbed a hand over his face and leaned against his chair. "I hate to do this, but wake her up. I need her and Stan to put their heads together on this and get me some answers. She's done this sort of thing before – she's our best chance."

"Boss, Elizabeth's…drunk," Max explained. "She's out like a light."

"What?!"

"We were at Jake's playing darts and…Ritchie was the one who kept making her take shots. I didn't do it! It's not my fault. I tried to make him stop but he hates her and wouldn't."

Jason closed his eyes. "Sonny, she's out. She fell asleep on the way up – there's no way we could get her up now."

The mobster let out a heavy sigh, gratefully accepting the scotch that Milo handed him. "God damn, of all the nights. What the hell were you thinking, getting her drunk?"

Max glanced helplessly at Jason. "But, Boss, we-"

"Okay, fine, next best thing," Sonny murmured, pacing around the living room now. "Where's Spinelli? If I can't get Elizabeth on this…we'll have to have him do it. I want him on the phone with Stan. Tell him I'm sorry to pull him out of bed, but this is important."

"I'll go get him," Milo offered. "Be right back."

"And I want double guards on the kids," Sonny continued. "Elizabeth and Spinelli – anytime they step out of Harborview Towers, they take two guards with them. Whoever is doing this can come after me, but I will not _stand _for those two to get hurt. Francis, make sure it's handled."

"On it now, Boss," the guard assured him. "Good night."

Sonny let out a slow breath and appeared to gradually calm himself now that all the orders had been issued and his guards knew what to do. However, when he opened his eyes, Max was still standing there.

The mobster's eyes narrowed, and Max gulped. "Okay, well, I'm on it, too, Boss. See you."

And with that, he half-ran out of the penthouse to go make himself useful somewhere else. Jason moved aside so that Sonny could take a seat on the couch and leaned back on the adjoining armrest. This was nothing new for the two of them; they'd handled situations like these time and time again. Of course, this time as they faced it together again, things were very different.

Spinelli poked his head into the penthouse, his hair mussed and tousled. "I heard that with the Dragon out of commission, you required my services, Mister Corinthos Sir."

This time, there were kids involved.


	19. Chapter 19

**Hack 19**

"Max told me everything."

Jason looked up as Elizabeth entered the penthouse, having practically kicked open the front door, and headed straight for Sonny. The mobster put down his morning cup of coffee and buried his nose in her hair when Elizabeth threw her arms around him. They stood like that for a long moment, and then she kissed his cheek and pulled away.

"You're fine, right? You're absolutely fine? You promise me?"

"They didn't touch us," Sonny informed her, gently rubbing her shoulders. "Francis got me out of there in time. They put a few nicks in the Cadillac, but that's what we have them doubly reinforced for."

"I heard Spinelli's been working the case," she said, glancing over at the couch where the boy had finally collapsed against the armrest after almost a whole night spent with his computer. "I'm so sorry, I should have-"

"It's fine," Sonny assured her. "Max told me that you had a late night and that you were asleep, so we had Spinelli do it. I think he said he got a few feeds from the cameras mounted across the street and at the valet check-in station, but that was two hours ago."

"I can take it from here," Elizabeth informed him. "Sonny, I am still _so _sorry about last night. If I had any idea that this would happen, I would never have gone out with the guys."

"But you didn't know," he reminded her. "You couldn't have. And I won't have you sitting around at home and waiting to see what I'm doing instead of going out with your friends. It's fine. I'm sorry if it felt like we fazed you out, but we needed someone to start this up and Spinelli was just across the hall…"

Jason was sure he heard her next words wrong, because there was no way Elizabeth Webber would say that about a situation regarding Damien Spinelli if she wasn't having an aneurysm of some sort.

"I understand," she replied honestly. "It was the obvious thing to do. Don't feel guilty about calling on him if I'm not around – _especially _if someone makes an attempt on your life or Jason's. If the nerd helped you out, that's great. But I'm here now, and just give me an hour or two and I'll see what else I can come up with."

"I want whoever was behind this, found," the mobster told her. "I know it's a long shot, but do what you can. We have to find out whatever we can before whoever this was comes at us again – or targets you and Spinelli. And about that – from now on, whenever you set foot outside this penthouse, you're taking two guards. I don't care if it's an inconvenience, I won't stand for him coming after you two. We'll have to handle this immediately, hopefully before Don Tagliati's anniversary dinner. If that asshole-"

"Hey, okay, it's fine," she soothed as Jason watched. "Look, I want you to calm down, okay? I know it's hard, but just breathe. We'll do our best to find out who it was that took shots at you, but the important thing right now – the thing we need to be thankful for – is that both you and Francis made it out okay. Everything else will follow – just take a second and breathe, okay?"

Jason watched his best friend let out a slow, cleansing breath. Elizabeth, however, was already on the move. She barely glanced at him as she made her way to the couch where Spinelli was snoring. Apparently, the tequila from last night didn't cramp her style when there was work to be done.

"Hey. Nerd. Wake up."

"Gmph," Spinelli mumbled, pulling his beanie down over his eyes. "Hzzrrrrm."

"Charming," Elizabeth groused, grabbing a hold of his lapel and hauling him into a sitting position. "Okay, come on, nerd, your fifteen minutes of fame are over. Go back to playing in the sandbox and let the big kids handle this."

With some difficulty, she planted her heels in the carpet and hauled Spinelli to his feet, using the momentum to swing him onto the nearby armchair. The boy let out a muffled groan and curled up into a ball, entirely beat from spending the whole night clicking away on his keyboard.

"All right, let's do this," Elizabeth muttered, cracking her knuckles and sitting down in front of Princess Peach. "Jason, get me some coffee, would you?"

He stared at the back of her head for a moment, surprised and just a little inexplicably irked, before reaching for the steaming cup on the dining table. "Here."

She took a big gulp, made a face, and handed it back to him. "It needs more sugar. Thanks."

Funny, he didn't recall telling her that he'd be happy to add some for her.

But the brunette had already moved on to more important matters and was clicking in and out of the applications that Spinelli had running. "I gotta give the nerd credit – he hacked into all the security feeds and pulled a few pretty decent shots. How long did it take him to do this?"

"He was plugging away most of the night," Sonny replied, sitting down on the armchair by the wet bar. It had been a long night for him and he hadn't gotten much in the way of sleep. "What do you think?"

"I think if I fool around with it, I have a decent shot of getting a plate we can run," she informed him, barely looking up when Jason set the coffee down on the table. Having nothing better to do, the enforcer took a seat next to her and looked over her shoulder at the screen. "It's going to take some time, though. Let me just see what I can do…"

* * *

_Two hours later…_

"Okay, I think I've got it," Elizabeth announced, hurriedly jotting down a license plate number on her notepad. She squinted at the screen and took down a second number, which was a variation on the first because she couldn't get a clear read on the last digit. "I'm going to have Stan run these and we'll see what he finds."

Sonny nodded and moved past a sleeping Spinelli to see what she had. "Good work, sweetheart. You going to run it against the New York database?"

"For starters," she answered, patting Jason's thigh to let him know that she needed to squeeze past. "I want you to know that it's still a long shot, though. I've got two plate possibilities here, and they might be unregistered or fake to begin with, and we'll have nothing to go on. Personally, I'm hoping it's a fluke and not indicative of any larger organizational tensions."

"A fluke?"

She nodded. "You know – some random street kids trying to take you down, make a name for themselves. You said yourself that none of the shots so much as grazed you or Francis, and that they only dinged the car. Sounds like the work of an amateur."

Sonny was nodding slowly. "Yeah, it definitely wasn't a clean job. Very slow, very sloppy. But run the numbers anyway, and we'll see what you get."

Jason stood up as Elizabeth grabbed her purse and tucked the scrap of paper safely inside. "If you're heading down to the warehouse, I'll come with you."

"Thanks," Sonny replied gratefully. "She'll be fine if you're with her. Sweetheart, let me know the second you find out anything."

"Will do," she answered, holding the door open for Jason.

Sonny waited until they left and then began clearing the plates and mugs from the living room. The clatter of the coffee mugs roused Spinelli, who poked his head up from the armchair like a turtle and looked around, confused.

"Hey…what happened?"

The mobster tossed him a throw blanket and continued to straighten out the room. "Elizabeth woke up, ran things for a while, and now she and Jason are running a few plate numbers with Stan."

This news was upsetting to the boy, and his face crumpled. "Aw, man. The Jackal was hoping that this would be _his _collar."

"The Jackal did a great job," Sonny assured him, giving the boy a pat on the head. "It's just that you had been working all night and needed to get some rest. Besides, Elizabeth's been doing this sort of thing for a while. Don't worry – get some sleep. You did good, kid."

But telling Spinelli not to worry was useless because as far as the Dragon was concerned, Spinelli _always _worried. And even as he drifted back to sleep in his comfortable armchair, his thoughts strayed to the competition at hand, and the fact that he had once again fallen just a little short of his worthy foe.

* * *

Stan hadn't been able to find anything, meaning that the plates were most likely unregistered, but he immediately sent the information to a contact of his that had worked such cases for years, and Jason and Elizabeth left the warehouse hoping that they'd eventually have some answers.

"You going home or somewhere else?"

Jason slid into the driver's seat of the black SUV, the only vehicle he drove if he couldn't take his bike, and shook his head. "I have a business meeting to get to, but I'll drop you off at Harborview."

Elizabeth nodded and remained silent for most of the ride back to the Towers. Jason could tell she was still worried about what had happened to Sonny the night before, and she was still trying to puzzle through the information to see if she had missed anything.

"You did fine, you know."

"I know that," she replied defensively. "Don't you think I know that? I don't need you to compliment me on something that I've been doing for years without any help."

He snorted and glanced at his side mirror. "Fine."

Silence stretched out between them again, and then Elizabeth began to click her nails on the hand rest. Just when Jason was about to tell her to knock it the hell off, she turned in her seat to face him.

"You don't think that anything bigger's going down, do you?"

He glanced at her sideways. "What do you mean?"

The brunette rolled her eyes. "Don't get evasive with me, Morgan – I probably know more about the organization than you do. I'm asking for a little speculation: do you think anything big is going down? With the other families, or another enemy?"

He mulled over the question carefully, still uneasy at the thought of divulging sensitive information to a young woman. It went against everything that Sonny had ever told him, but it appeared he had little choice in the matter. "Things have been pretty quiet for a while now. We were expecting something to happen when I came home, but no one did anything."

"I still hope it was a fluke," Elizabeth murmured, resting her palm on the gearshift and flicking her fingers compulsively. He suspected that was yet another one of her little tics left over from the accident. "Some damn street kids trying to get in good with a boss by taking shots at Sonny. And I'm hoping that's all it was. None of the Five Family heads have made a play for the Corinthos-Morgan territories in about…three, four years, and the last time one of them did we eliminated him. They can't be that stupid to try it again."

It felt wrong, somehow, to hear talk of elimination coming from her lips, and Jason shifted in his seat. This was going to take some getting used to on his part. "One of the heads tried to take over?"

"And did a damn sloppy job of it, too," she confirmed. "Sonny probably didn't tell you because we were able to handle it so quickly. It was about the same time that he was having his, uh, blackjack troubles and we were losing money. The IRS was closing in, and we had a real problem of disloyalty in the ranks. Some of our men turned and fed information to Casteletanna, and he tried to make a move on the territories and the waterfront routes."

"How'd Sonny handle it?"

She slid him a disapproving but unsurprised sidelong look. "_I_ was the one who found out about it through one of our many, many taps at the time."

The corner of his mouth quirked up, but Jason only nodded. "Ah."

She had experience with taps, after all.

"So where's the-"

"Still not telling you," she interrupted. "Anyway, I found out about it and told Sonny and the gang – it was Ritchie, Max, Francis, Johnny, and Marco at the time because Milo hadn't joined yet and Trevor was in Puerto Rico on assignment. They had me dig a little more, and then they took care of it. It was a risky thing to do because the IRS was so close, but they got it done and eliminated the opposition while cleaning up the organization and disposing of those who wanted Sonny to go down. Then the Feds moved off, Sonny moved some money around, and with Casteletanna's shipping routes managed to get back in the black. It all worked out."

Elizabeth flipped her dark hair over her shoulder and bit her lip as they came up to the Towers. "Anyway, I was just asking because…it seems like whoever wants to take Sonny down likes to do it when we have other problems going on. You know how they say bad things come in threes? Kind of like that. With the incident last night, I was just wondering if you knew off-hand of anything else going down."

He shook his head. "No. Not yet, anyway. Don't worry about it, we'll handle it when the time comes. And do me a favor – see if Spinelli's up by now and if he is, feed him."

She snorted and hopped out of the SUV before he could open his door and come around to help her down. "What am I, the little old lady that lived in a shoe? Nerd can make his own damn sandwich."

And before he could reply, she shut the door and hopped on up the stairs to the lobby.

* * *

"Your Highness, Mister Jason Morgan is here to see you."

"Send him in, Alfred," Jason heard Nikolas say from behind the slightly ajar door. "And from now on, please remember that there's no need to announce him. Just let him come in."

"Very good, Sir." Alfred came back into the hallway and held the door open for him. "His Royal Highness Prince Nikolas Cassidine will see you now, Mister Morgan."

Jason nodded at the butler and entered the large room that his friend used as an office and found the Prince seated at his antique desk, a gift from his Uncle Stefan. Behind him, Alfred quietly shut the door and left the men to their business.

"You called and said you wanted to see me?"

Nikolas nodded and reached for two folders that he had placed on his desk for just this meeting. "Yes, I wanted to give you these. You are one of the chief investors in Cassidine Textiles, and there are going to be a few changes in these upcoming weeks. All of our main investors will be receiving this information; I just thought I'd give it to you personally."

Jason accepted the file and leafed through it, finding nothing of immediate importance. "Okay."

"And also, this." Nikolas held the second file gingerly in his hands, almost as if he were hesitant to turn it over. "I got a call from Elizabeth early this morning about the incident last night at the Locust Tree. I've been unable to reach him as of yet, but please convey my regards and best wishes to Sonny."

"Will do," Jason nodded, more interested in the file now that he sensed his friend's unease. "What's that?"

"Elizabeth said that someone took shots at Sonny," the Prince continued. "She also gave voice to her suspicions that the incident might be indicative of…larger organizational tensions, she called it. She thinks that the Eastern syndicates are about due for a war."

Jason wasn't following. "What does that have to do with you?"

And why did Elizabeth talk so damn much about the business to people who had no right to know anything about it?

"Because I had mentioned a few weeks earlier that Cassidine Industries had been courted by a Spanish financier by the name of Lorenzo Alcazar." Nikolas's dark brown eyes finally traveled up from the file and met his seriously.

"I told Elizabeth that he seemed very aggressive in striking a partnership that would enable him to use the water routes exclusive to Cassidine Industries – particularly the one that I lease to you and Sonny on a yearly contract basis. The man is an arms dealer with ties to Venezuela and has worked with the U.S. government in the past, and I didn't like his image and didn't think it would be good for Cassidine Industries to align itself with such a character."

He handed the file over to Jason and clasped his hands at the waist. "When I refused, Mister Alcazar became quite upset. We did not part on good terms. The next thing I know, he's being seen dining with several of your associates."

Jason's brows jumped. "Any of the Five Family heads?"

But the Prince shook his head. "Not to my knowledge, no. Lower level…bosses, if that's the correct term. It seemed very suspicious behavior, but I felt no need to investigate. Truth be told, I was just happy to be rid of the man. However, when Elizabeth called this morning, she seemed clearly to think that something might be going on. And that reminded me of my dealings with Lorenzo Alcazar."

He gestured to the large file in Jason's hands. "Enclosed you will find documentation of all of Mister Alcazar's proposals, as well as personal correspondence in the form of emails and phone transcripts. I always keep a close eye on all my business partners, as well as hopeful business partners, and I do believe he must have a similar file on me. At any rate, I might just be wasting your time with this – it could be nothing. But something in Elizabeth's tone compelled me to put together this information for you, just in case it turns out to be at all useful."

Jason nodded gratefully. "Thanks. I'll pass it along to Sonny and we'll check this guy out. I'll see you later."

"Just one more thing," Nikolas called out, his voice flatter this time, as Jason headed for the door. "There's one more thing I feel we should discuss before we part ways today."

Jason turned around slowly. "Business?"

"Decidedly not."

He stared at his old friend, his expression blank, and wondered what it was that could have Nikolas so solemn all of a sudden. "What, then?"

The Prince folded his hands behind his back and lifted his chin a notch. "I want to discuss your new relationship with Elizabeth: I think it's a very, very bad idea."

The statement floored him. It wasn't so much the fact that Nikolas felt he could pass judgment on his private affairs, but more that Nikolas knew about these very private, very literal affairs.

"How do you-"

Nikolas easily read the disbelief in his friend's eyes. "Know about this new liaison of yours? Elizabeth told us. Last night at Jake's – she told us of your little arrangement."

He couldn't believe it. After all that crap about him not telling Spinelli, she went and told Nikolas. Or maybe…

"What the hell do you mean, 'us?'"

His friend remained unflinchingly rigid. "Us. Myself, Stan, Ritchie, Max, Milo, and Johnny. We were all there."

Jason's eyes blazed and he turned on his heel, clenching the file in his firm grasp. "It's none of your business."

"And that's where you're wrong," Nikolas replied, his voice uncharacteristically loud for a refined man with such polished manners. "Anything that happens to Elizabeth is very much my business. I have a vested interest in her well-being and happiness: she's my closest friend."

"Yeah? And what have I been for the last eight years?"

"Gone!" Nikolas replied hotly. "For most of them, at any rate. Halfway around the world, doing God knows what. You disappeared, Jason, what do you expect? I have business associates I _hate _with every last fiber of my being, and even they call me up on holidays and wish me well. You disappeared without a trace! My best friend, and you couldn't even make a phone call. And yes, I became very close with Elizabeth after you had gone."

Jason snorted. "For obvious reasons."

"And just what the _hell _is that supposed to mean?" Nikolas slammed a file he'd been holding down onto his desk. "What are you trying to insinuate?"

"You know what it means," the enforcer retorted. "You've only been interested in her for one thing."

"Do not for one minute presume to know anything about the nature of my relationship with Elizabeth Webber," the Prince bit off. The vein in his forehead was beginning to throb now, and his complexion was rapidly becoming florid. "We have been close for years now, and I will not listen to any grievances you may-"

"You're just pissed off because she called an end to your little deal," Jason spat. "It was long overdue, anyway."

"My little deal?" Nikolas parroted. "Oh, listen to yourself – what the hell do you have going on with her now? You're so transparent – you did this on purpose!"

"I-"

"You most definitely did," the Prince interrupted. "You couldn't stand the thought that Elizabeth and I were such good friends and that your little circle – your inner sanctum – didn't exist anymore. And you just had to force your way into it and tell her that she had to pick."

He snorted aloud and shook his head. "I don't share. Spare me the bullshit, Jason. _I don't share_ – for God's sake, since _when _do you not share? You've never had that rule. You've never had any problem whoring around, you just made sure that you were tested often enough. _I don't share._ That's a lark.

"You just wanted control over the whole situation. Of course, that's not surprising. You always want control over everything." Nikolas squared his jaw and looked his old friend directly in the eyes. "Well, let me tell you something. If it's control you're after, you're in for a rude awakening. Because there is no way Elizabeth will let you have it, and you're a fool to think otherwise. This little relationship of yours is never going to work."

Jason's expression made it absolutely clear that he didn't believe a word his old friend was saying. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"I know why my relationship with Elizabeth has flourished these past six years and why your relationship with her doesn't stand a chance," Nikolas shrugged. "Because I gave her something that you will never be able to – not at this rate, anyway."

He snorted. "Yeah, I don't know about that."

"I'm not talking about sex," Nikolas replied wearily, pinching the bridge of his nose. His friend could be so single-minded sometimes. "I'm talking about respect."

"What?"

"Respect," he repeated plainly. "I respect her. I always have, since the first time Sonny introduced us. She was such an incredible girl, even then – so intelligent, so shrewd, and so perceptive. The accident didn't take that away. If anything, I like to think that it only enhanced those skills of hers. I watched her struggle through a long and intense recovery that would have caused anyone else to give up, and I watched her actively make a new life for herself.

"I know of her considerable skills and talent – hell, I've hired her a few times on a contract basis to do some work for Cassidine Industries – and I respect the hell out of her for it. The same goes for the rest of the guys. Why do you think that the other guards and Stan call her such a close friend? Why do they spend so much time with her? Drinking, shooting pool, doing her favors, just lending an ear? After all, they're all older than her. And they're men. You'd think that they had better things to do than shoot the breeze with a barely legal woman like Elizabeth."

"I don't have time for this," Jason informed him coolly. "And I don't give a shit, anyway."

"It's because they feel the same way," Nikolas continued loudly. "Unlike you, they all respect her and admire her for who she is, nothing more and nothing less. They know that she's spirited and loud and spoiled, but they also know that she's diligent and loyal to a fault, and that if she thinks of someone as a friend, she will fight like hell to keep that person safe. Do you think that there's a single man in that group whose life she hasn't saved single-handedly?"

This question threw Jason for a loop; it was something he'd never thought of before.

"She found out that one of Sonny's associates was going to bomb the warehouse the day that Johnny and Max were slated to do inventory – she called them on their way to work and told them to stay put. She found out that the PCPD had planted a kilo of coke in a shipment of coffee beans that Ritchie was supervising and had him intercept it before Taggert could arrive on the scene. She saved Milo's life his first day on the job. I could go on and on, Jason, but I'll let you ask her for yourself. All of those men, and myself included, know exactly what Elizabeth is capable of and we admire her strength and tenacity and _we give her credit for it._

"You, on the other hand, have done nothing but treat her like a child since the day you arrived, according to what I understand. I'm sure you still think of her as the 'kid' running around the penthouse just because Sonny has a soft spot for wounded birds. You don't give her credit for what she's capable of doing – hell, you're not even interested in finding out just what she can do. You see her as an annoying interloper that somehow usurped your position, and the only reason that you struck up this little liaison because you think sex is an excellent way to control a woman – and to control this situation."

Nikolas shook his head in disgust. "And until you stop thinking of her as an annoyance, as a young girl that got mixed up into something way over her head, nothing will work between you two. She'll find out eventually that you were only interested in her so that you could contain her, or you'll eventually find that she's not worth the energy. Either way, without that respect, this isn't going to go anywhere. And I'll be damned if I let you hurt my friend just because you're threatened by her new place in your life."

Jason's lips tightened into a thin, red line and he stalked forward until he was at Nikolas's desk, his eyes practically drilling holes into the Prince's gaze. "I'm going to say this once. My life is none of your business. Elizabeth is a grown woman and she can make her own decisions. She doesn't need her _friend _trying to control her life just because she ended things with him. Stay out of this. It is _none _of your concern. And you won't like what happens if you can't mind your own business."

Nikolas's dark brown eyes blazed with anger, but he kept his voice controlled and in check. "Jason, you remember how to get to the foyer; I'm sure you can see yourself out."

* * *

The first thing that Jason saw when he stepped into Penthouse IV was Spinelli, seated on the couch with an afghan covering his legs and a bowl of chili in his hands, watching cartoons on Sonny's plasma screen.

"What are you doing?"

"The Dragon ordered in Kelly's chili for me, Stone Cold," the boy announced, brandishing a heaping spoonful just in case his mentor didn't believe him. "I found it a little bland for my taste, but then Mister Corinthos Sir provided a most _poquito _hot sauce of his and now I have liquid fire coursing through my veins."

Jason rolled his eyes and dropped his leather jacket on Sonny's desk chair. "You mean _picante _– _poquito _means little, not spicy. And I meant, what are you doing here? Have you been here all morning?"

The boy nodded, watching as an animated Perry Como sang a song about anvils. "Yes. The Dragon came home a little while ago and said that you went to a business meeting. Then she got me food. What business meeting did you have to attend, Stone Cold?"

Jason shook his head and looked away. "Nikolas wanted me to meet him at Wyndemere, and then I had to stop by the warehouse and talk to Stan. Why don't you go back to our penthouse? You're probably bothering Sonny."

"I'm fine," the mobster answered from behind the morning paper. "I actually like having a little noise in this place. Elizabeth used to watch cartoons sometimes in the morning – same ones, too. I recognize those weird puppy-children things doing that dance or whatever they're doing."

Jason frowned at his friend, then shook his head. "Fine. I don't care. Where's Elizabeth? Isn't she eating with you?"

Spinelli shook his head. "The Dragon said that she wasn't hungry and retired to her own humble abode."

He nodded and turned around, leaving the penthouse before Sonny or Spinelli could ask him another question. Jason didn't hear any music or noise coming from Elizabeth's penthouse, so he quickly rapped his knuckles on the door and walked in.

He found her sitting on the edge of the dining table with an empty coffee mug at her side, gazing out the balcony windows. "Hey."

She turned around, gracing him with an absent half-smile. "Hey."

Jason had thought for a minute that she was going to ask him about his business meeting and how it went, but soon realized that Spinelli was more suited for that kind of small talk. Apparently, Elizabeth just didn't care. "What are you doing?"

"Sitting," she shrugged. And then she resumed her task of staring diligently out the window.

Jason let out a sigh and slowly walked over to where she was. "So I saw Nikolas today."

"Mm-hmm."

"And then I went to the warehouse."

"Yeah."

"And saw Stan, Max, and Johnny."

"Okay."

"Talked to them for a while."

"Congratulations; the medal's in the mail."

He pursed his lips, realizing that this was getting him nowhere. So instead, Jason planted his hands on her hips, ignored her squeal, and spun her around so that she faced him. "You told them about us."

Elizabeth swatted his hands away, frowning when he didn't budge and kept her framed between his strong arms. "So? What's your point?"

Now she was starting to irritate him. "After all the grief you gave me about not telling Spinelli, you go and tell those guys? They work for me! And now I have to put up with their shit-faced grins and their stupid jokes and-"

"Hey, I didn't give you any grief about anything," she replied defensively. "I just told you not to tell the nerd."

"Or anyone else."

"And only because it would reflect poorly on me," she insisted. "And even then, I was kidding. Kind of. Maybe a little. Not a lot. But still."

"What?"

"Who cares if the guys know?" Elizabeth asked, exasperated when he didn't see it her way. She wasn't used to men arguing with her, and Jason had an annoying habit of doing that quite frequently. "So what?"

"You said you wouldn't tell anyone!"

"No, I didn't," she smiled, wagging a finger in his face. "If you will remember, I never once said anything about who I would or wouldn't tell. And who cares if they know? You're their boss. If they get to cocky about it, you can demote them. Put them on door duty. Make them your coffee fetchers. Or, you can beat the crap out of them. Personally, I think Ritchie's been asking for it. You should start with him. But don't tell him I said that."

Jason closed his eyes and bowed his head, clearly exasperated. Unfortunately, he was in such close proximity with Elizabeth that the movement caused his hair to brush her nose, which in turn caused her to sneeze loudly right by his ear.

"If the guys know about it, then there's no reason to hide it from Spinelli."

She arched a brow at him and rubbed her finger under her nose. "Are you stupid?"

Well, he'd never had it put to him so plainly before. "I-"

"No, seriously, are you stupid?" she persisted. "Because only a stupid person would say that."

…Just why was he interested in this chick?

Elizabeth let out a huff and adjusted her bra strap, which had slipped underneath her white collared shirt to a short distance below her shoulder. The movement, of course, drew Jason's attention to her chest and promptly reminded him of the answer to his previous question.

The things he was willing to put up with…

"Listen, if the guys know, big deal. They smirk. They make dirty jokes. They ask me how you are in bed and then laugh when I say you get girly afterwards."

"What?!"

She patted his shoulder sympathetically. "But in the end, it's no big deal because at the end of the day, they work for you. And they know that if they go too far in bugging me, I'll cry and then Sonny will ride their asses for a month. It doesn't disrupt anything.

"However, if the nerd finds out that we're doing this, what's he going to do?" Her brows rose as she posed the question to him. "That's right: he's going to _cry _about it. And I can't deal with crying. I just can't. So unless you want to deal with him getting clingy and cry-y and weird about it, don't say anything."

She had a point, but Jason hated admitting that. So he did what he did best and adroitly changed the subject. "I still don't get how it's okay for you to tell the guards and Nikolas our personal business."

"I had a very good reason, I swear!" she promised.

He arched a brow at her. "And that was?"

"…I didn't want Ritchie to win." Elizabeth shrugged, looking suspiciously unrepentant. "He was going to make me do shots, and I didn't want him to win. Anyone but Ritchie – I wouldn't have cared if I lost to Max or Johnny or Stan or Milo. Just anyone but Ritchie. God, he pisses me off. Him with that stupid face…"

She shook her head and flipped her hair over her shoulder. "What, so we cool now or what? Because I only budget in about ten minutes daily for girly temper tantrums, and you just ate through the whole allotment in one go. You're going to have to be on your best behavior for the rest of the day, Morgan."

Elizabeth had to smile when he only scowled back at her. "Aw, still mad? That's so…cute."

With a sly smirk, she wrapped her arms around his neck and lightly nudged his nose with hers. "You know, I bet I can turn that self-righteous anger into something fun. What do you say?"

It was amazing how she constantly belittled his anger and that he just couldn't stay mad at her for it. Still, Jason held out as long as he could as she pressed his lips to his and ran her fingers through his hair. For some reason, she loved to play with it and tangle it between her fingers.

"They'll never let me live this down, you know."

She laughed against his mouth and then nibbled on his lower lip. "Shouldn't that be my line?"

Jason growled low in his throat and gripped her waist lightly, using his hold to ease her down onto the dining table. He parted her lips easily with his tongue and kissed her deeply, bending over the table and keeping her pinned underneath him.

Elizabeth gasped for breath when he drew his mouth away and scraped her nails through the hair on the base of his neck as he kissed his way along her jaw line. "Wait – what were we fighting about?"

"Something about Spinelli."

"Ugh," she groaned, arching her back and allowing him better access to her neck. "Who wants to talk about the nerd at a time like this?"

"Agreed," he murmured, nipping at her earlobe. He tried to part her legs with his thigh and found that she resisted; with another tug on her ear, however, Jason was able to slide his legs in between hers. He placed his hand on her knee, wondering if she'd wrap her legs around him, and was pleased when she picked up on the cue.

"Hey, Toothpick," Max called out as he rapped on the door and entered it not two seconds later. "Got a call from Stan and he told me to – Oh, dear God."

And with that, the bodyguard whirled around and practically fled, making sure to let the door shut behind him.

Elizabeth and Jason stared at the front door, able to make out some sort of frenzied jabbering between Max and Trevor out in the hall. Then the two of them looked at each other, shrugged, and continued with their plans for the afternoon.


	20. Chapter 20

**Hack 20**

_The next afternoon, early…_

Jason lifted his head groggily when he heard Elizabeth walk back into her bedroom. Somehow, he had fallen asleep there after they'd fooled around, despite his promise never to linger. Since the first time he and Elizabeth had laid down the law, they had managed to hammer down a list of specifics. She was well aware that he was the sort that hated cute nicknames – coming up with them and being called by them – he didn't like public displays of affection, he wouldn't watch her chick movies or cartoons, and he wouldn't give her gifts. Elizabeth had agreed to all of the following – and reversed them so they held true the other way – and added that she would not be counted on to wait on him if he ever stayed out late, and she would not be cuddling after sex.

All of this was, of course, perfectly acceptable to Jason, who never figured that the rules would be called into question. Of course, that explained why after making her scream his name a little over an hour ago, he was still waking up in bed alone. This was, again, perfectly acceptable and he hardly expected anything different. He yawned and rolled over onto his stomach, fully accepting of _all _of this, and remembered only when the sheets twisted around him that he was still completely undressed.

Elizabeth eyed him from across the room, her irritation apparent. She was fully dressed now, not in the state he'd left her just a little while ago, and looked entirely put together. The one thing not composed, however, was her expression as she strode over to her king-sized bed. Once there, the brunette tilted her head, raised her chin a notch, and smacked the cordless phone against her palm.

"Were you ever planning on telling me that Nikolas gave you a file on Lorenzo Alcazar yesterday?"

Jason closed his eyes, his long hair falling into his face, and only opened them when she kicked the bedpost. "I left a copy of it with Stan."

"And you gave the other one to Spinelli last night," she finished coolly, not the least bit amused or charitable.

He hid his half-smirk in her pillow. "See, your knowing that only proves that you bugged our penthouse."

But Elizabeth wasn't falling for his evasive maneuvers. "No, I know that because Nerd couldn't stop bragging. And because Nikolas just called me and asked if I'd had a chance to look it over."

Jason let out a sigh and stretched languidly, but made no move to get out of bed. His old friend was proving to be a royal pain in the ass. "It was nothing. Just business documents. I only gave them to Spinelli for safe-keeping."

"No, you gave them to him so that he'd have a head start should something come up, and you kept them from me so that I would be completely in the dark." She shook her head and set the phone on her night table.

"Well, the joke's on you, because Stan just sent me a copy of everything. And you're going to pay for this." With that, she grabbed hold of the sheets and before Jason could do anything about it, gave them a hard yank and pulled them completely off his naked body. Unconcerned, she balled them up and pitched them into her open closet, safely out of reach.

"See you later, Morgan."

Jason watched her hips sway from side to side as she left the bedroom and rolled over onto his side when she was gone.

Ah, fuck.

* * *

Sonny was talking to Max when he heard the door to Penthouse II open, and both men turned around to see Spinelli standing in the hall.

"Hey, Spaghetti."

"Silent Sentinel," the boy nodded. "Mister Corinthos Sir. You wouldn't happen to know if the Dragon were home, would you?"

"Elizabeth?" Jason asked, coming out of Sonny's penthouse. "Yeah, I think she's still there. Why? What do you need from her?"

"Oh, nothing," the boy smiled. "The Jackal has only completed his most recent challenge and is merely awaiting the printouts. I thought I'd go see how far my worthy adversary has progressed."

"I'll come with you," Jason volunteered, anxious to see the same. He clapped Spinelli on the back, his own low-key way of congratulating the boy on a job well done, and together they walked down the hall to Penthouse VI and left Sonny and Max to their business.

Spinelli rapped his knuckles on the door and reached for the knob, having already learned from Elizabeth that actually waiting to be invited in was entirely unnecessary. "Dragon! Hark! Where be the – Oh, my God."

The two men stared at the brunette, who had been sitting on the couch with her laptop reading Stan's PDF copy of the Alcazar files. Dressed in a pair of skinny black Levi's stretch-to-fit jeans, black tennis shoes, a Ramones t-shirt with an old cardigan, and a pair of black Buddy Holly reading glasses perched low on her nose, this was an Elizabeth neither man had ever seen before. This was Elizabeth in her comfort clothes, in her comfort zone.

"Oh, my God, she's a _nerd_!" Spinelli laughed, pointing at the brunette and nearly falling into Jason's side. "She's a nerd!"

The enforcer had to laugh at that because Spinelli was right. One didn't get any nerdier than sitting on the couch with a computer and several tall stacks of books, dressed like that and wearing those glasses.

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed lethally, but Spinelli and Jason just would not stop laughing. Spinelli was the worst: he just wouldn't shut up. Jason at least tried to hide it, but she knew that was only because he knew she was planning to pay him back for the file and he didn't want to make it worse.

"I mean, after all this time of referring to the Jackal as simply Nerd, what poetic justice-" He paused and coughed from laughing so hard. "What poetic justice that the fearsome Dragon should turn out to be a nerd herself!"

"That's it!" Elizabeth burst out, slamming her laptop shut. "I'll show you a nerd, you little nerd-"

Jason's eyes widened when she leapt up onto the back of the couch and launched herself at Spinelli, effectively tackling him to the floor. "Whoa, whoa-"

"That's a nerd for you, you miserable little-"

"Stone Cold! Stone Cold – Ow! Her knee is on my heart!"

"Are you _ever _going to call me that word again? Huh?"

"Okay, that's enough," Jason broke in, doing his best to pull the two of them apart.

"Why aren't I blacking out?!"

"Elizabeth!" Seeing nothing else to do, Jason wrapped his arms around her narrow waist and lifted her up off the floor. He held her against his chest as she kicked and struggled, giving Spinelli enough time to peel himself off the floor.

The boy struggled to his feet and lurched toward the door, managing to grab the knob before he fell again. "So, who wants to go to the hospital?"

Jason rolled his eyes and adjusted his hold on Elizabeth, who was still kicking her feet in Spinelli's direction. "Why don't you go back to the penthouse? I'll meet you there in a little bit."

"But what about you?" the boy asked worriedly.

"I can handle myself," Jason retorted, grunting when Elizabeth elbowed him in the gut. "Just – go."

As soon as Spinelli was gone and the door was securely shut, Jason dropped Elizabeth onto the couch and dropped down next to her. "You okay? Come on, what was that about?"

"Stupid nerd," she muttered under her breath as she opened up her laptop again. There was too much work to be done and not enough time to do it, thanks to Jason's little find-the-file stunt. She hadn't even had time to properly complete her challenge and instead had been forced to do a half-assed job so that she could turn her attention to more crucial matters. "Needs to mind his own damn business."

Jason had to smile as he watched her, still so visibly irritated and bristling from her fight with Spinelli. "Honestly, those glasses are pushing it just a bit."

She swatted his hand away when he reached out to pluck them from her nose. "I haven't forgotten your little misdeeds of late, Morgan, and you _will _be paying for them. You can go now."

He stared at her for a moment, wondering if she were serious, then shrugged and stood. "All right, fine. See you later…nerd."

Miraculously, he managed to duck out the door before whatever she had thrown at him could make contact.

* * *

_Late that night…_

"What are we having for dinner, Mister Corinthos Sir?"

Sonny undid the buttons of his sleeves and began to methodically roll them up as he pondered the contents of the refrigerator. "Good question, Spinelli. I was thinking of doing something light tonight, since we all had such a heavy lunch. Maybe an orange chicken salad with homemade sweet and sour dressing…"

He shook his head and glanced at the clock. "Elizabeth should be over any minute now; I'll ask her if she had anything special in mind. She was mentioning macaroni the other day, and I think I have fresh blocks of mozzarella and cheddar, so that could work."

"Hey, everyone," came a voice at the door, and the men turned around to see Elizabeth breeze past Max. She looked much less nerdy than she did earlier in a pair of black slacks and a dark sapphire blouse, and Jason appreciated the change. "What's for dinner?"

"We were just trying to figure that out," Sonny told her. "What do you think? I was going to go with either macaroni or a nice orange chicken salad."

"Orange chicken salad," she cheered, dropping down on the couch next to Jason and reaching for a magazine she'd left on the coffee table that morning. "You want me to help?"

"Nah, you'd get your clothes dirty," he said. "It won't take me too long to prepare. Spinelli, why don't you come help me cut the vegetables for the salad?"

"Can do, Mister Corinthos Sir," the boy replied, quickly hopping off the couch and following his hopeful employer into the kitchen. "I'm really good with a knife – I can butcher a cow in my sleep."

"So I've heard."

Elizabeth watched the two men retreat to the kitchen and laughed under breath as she leafed through _Harper's Weekly_ to where she'd dog-eared an article on the postmodern hero. With a happy sigh, she crossed her legs, settled back into the cushions next to Jason, and commenced reading.

The enforcer eyed her warily, slightly suspicious of the drastic change in her mood. Earlier, she had been furious with him for the little stunt he'd pulled with the Alcazar file and she had promised payback. Now, however, she was sitting on the couch very close to him, all sweetness and light.

Something was definitely going on.

But this was a delicate situation, and Elizabeth was a complicated woman. The best course of action was to proceed with caution and feel out what he was dealing with here.

"So…took off the glasses, huh?"

She glanced up at him and smiled brightly. "Oh, yeah. I usually use those when I have to read a lot of stuff off my computer screen. It's hell on the eyes, I can tell you that much."

Humming softly, Elizabeth turned back to her magazine, seeming not to notice that he was staring at her in complete bafflement.

"You, uh, finish reading that whole file yet?"

Ooh, that was sure to get him in trouble.

But the brunette just nodded. "Yeah, it took some time, and I had a little bit of a late start, but I'm a really fast reader. And thankfully, Stan and Nikolas had both annotated the parts that were particularly suspicious, so I knew what I was looking for. They're such good friends."

Okay, this was just unreal.

Time to pull out the big guns.

"Yeah, Spinelli said he finished reading the files, too."

"Oh, good for him," she crooned, patting Jason's knee as if he was the one that had done the reading. "It's so good to know that we're both on the same page."

She turned back to her magazine and Jason turned his face the other way, his mind racing. Just what the hell was going on? Why wasn't she responding to his bait? Why wasn't she angry?

Well, the last one was simple enough. If she wasn't angry with him anymore, that meant that she had gotten past it, and the only way that she could have gotten past it was if she had already enacted her revenge.

Oh, shit.

Screw diplomacy.

"What did you do?"

Elizabeth looked up at him with wide eyes. "What are you talking about?"

"What did you do?" Jason ground out. "I know you're still mad about the Alcazar file and I know it was wrong to keep the information from you – but what did you do?"

"Do? I didn't do anything."

His eyes widened when she turned back to her magazine, entirely unconcerned and unruffled. "But you said you'd pay me back-"

"Oh, that," Elizabeth laughed, shaking her head as she licked her finger and turned the page. "I got a little carried away. I tend to go straight for the threats when I'm angry. I've had some time to cool down now, and I realize that it's really not that big a deal. So you hid the files from me and gave them to Spinelli – who cares?"

"You do," Jason burst out. "And you're not just going to let me go that easily. So what did you do? I already said I was sorry – just tell me what you did."

"First, you didn't say you were sorry," she pointed out. "Not that I'm looking for an apology, anyway. The entire thing was so juvenile, Jason, and I'm the one who should be apologizing for saying that I'd pay you back, and that you wouldn't know where and you wouldn't know how and you wouldn't know when, and that it'd get you when you least expected it and then you'd never try anything of the sort with me again without thinking twice about it. Really, it was very immature of me to say something like that. We're both reasonable adults, after all, and we should carry ourselves as such."

Her lips curled into a wicked little smirk at the end, and Jason felt the blood drain from his face.

Oh, _shit_.

She was still very much pissed off and very much in revenge-seeking mode, and whatever her plan was, she had already put it into motion. And he wouldn't know where or how or when, but it'd get him when he least expected it. God damn.

"Dinner's almost ready," Spinelli announced, sauntering back into the living room. He looked at Elizabeth, who was smiling broadly at the latest Harold Bloom article and then at Jason, who appeared a few shades paler as he stared at the wall in front of him.

"What's going on?"

"Jason and I were just talking," Elizabeth replied sweetly. "He was apologizing for giving you the file – sweet little thing."

Spinelli's eyes narrowed at he glanced again at his mentor. "Okay, you would only use _one _of those three words to describe Stone Cold, and you know it. What's really going on?"

"We agreed that the manner in which we've been conducting ourselves is ridiculous and immature," she told him, still leafing through her magazine. "I said that we should put it behind us. _Thing _agreed."

"Okay, that sounds a little more believable," Spinelli murmured, taking a seat on the armrest next to his friend. "You sure you're okay, Stone Cold?"

"Fine," Jason replied quickly – too quickly. "Listen, I need to talk to you. Out in the hall. Now."

Spinelli barely had time to respond before Jason grabbed his arm and yanked him out into the hallway, making sure to shut the door securely behind him. "Okay, seriously, what's going on?"

"She did something," Jason informed him, glancing over at Max who appeared quite interested. "Max, you, too, get over here."

"Yes, Boss?"

"She did something," Jason repeated. "I have no idea what – and that's what I need you guys to find out. She did something awful and we can't do anything until we figure out what it is."

Spinelli's eyes widened. "Oh, no – she found out that I stole her monkey butt lamp again, didn't she? Do you think she'd be any less mad if I admitted it and turned it over?"

"What?" Jason shook his head in frustration. "No, no, it's not something that you did. It's something that _I _did."

"You? She's mad at you?"

He nodded grimly. "And she did something. She's pretending that she's let it go-"

"But no one's stupid enough to believe that," Spinelli finished somberly. "Tricksy Dragon."

"I need you to go into the penthouse and see if anything's missing or messed up," Jason told Spinelli. "And Max, I need you to talk to Elizabeth. Get her to tell you what she did, and then tell me."

"You got it, Boss," Max agreed. Spinelli, however, had a few reservations about this task.

"You want me to go into our potentially booby-trapped _and _bugged penthouse on my own?" He shook his head rapidly and backed away. "Oh, no, Stone Cold, the Jackal most whole-heartedly refuses."

"The Jackal will do it if he knows what's good for him," Jason muttered. He grabbed Spinelli's arm and hauled him across the hall over to Penthouse II, then opened the door and pushed him in. "Hurry. I'll look with you. Max, you go talk to her and tell me what she says."

"You got it, Boss," the bodyguard repeated, even though he had no intention of doing anything of the sort. "God speed."

He waited until Jason and Spinelli disappeared into Penthouse II before heaving a sigh and heading back to Penthouse IV. Sonny was still in the kitchen and Elizabeth remained seated on the couch with her magazine. Max smirked at her and hiked up his pants at the knee, dropping down on the couch next to her.

"Whatcha reading?"

"_Harper's_," she replied. "There's this really transparent article about how there cannot be a postmodern hero. It's total crap – this idiot doesn't understand that the postmodern hero is the modern anti-hero. Can you believe that?"

"Well, sure," Max replied quickly. "But I don't care. Whatcha reading was more like code for what did you do to Jason?"

Elizabeth closed the periodical and smiled. "Did he send you over here to interrogate me?"

Max laughed and nodded. "Yup. So what's the scoop?"

She giggled and leaned closer. "Okay, so I told him I'd pay him back for hiding the file, right?"

He nodded. "Yeah, he and Spinelli just went ape shit out in the hall. They're searching the penthouse."

Elizabeth shook her head. "They're not going to find anything. Know why? Because I didn't do anything."

"You what?"

She shrugged playfully. "I told him I'd get him, and then I pretended to let it go. But I didn't do anything. Let him be paranoid and go searching for the answers on his own. Let him know what that feels like."

Max laughed and gave her a high-five. "That's awesome, Toothpick. Okay, I should get out there."

He was already at the door and had it partially ajar when she called out to him. "Max? I don't have to remind you that mum's the word, do I?"

The bodyguard snorted. "Please, Toothpick. Like I'd _ever _rat you out to Jason. You forget that I'm a loyal man."

She beamed at him and he wiggled his eyebrows, stepping out into the hall and shutting the door. Unfortunately, Max hadn't realized that Jason was also about to leave his penthouse at that moment and had overheard him swear his loyalty to the Dragon over the enforcer.

Jason stepped back into his penthouse, waited two seconds, then made sure to cause some commotion when he stepped out again. Max instantly turned around and nodded.

"So? Anything?"

The bodyguard shook his head and relied on a half-truth. "Nothing."

Jason's eyes narrowed, but he nodded anyway. "Thanks for letting me know, Max."

He shifted but remained otherwise firm. "No problem, Boss."

"Spinelli's still checking it out, but we didn't find anything," Jason grumbled, looking over his shoulder and into his home. "Spinelli! Get out here! Sonny's going to be calling us in for dinner in a minute!"

The boy peeked out from behind the door. "You're not going to like this, but…Levinas pooped on the pool table."

Jason closed his eyes and swore. "Get me the fucking pest control on the phone."

"No, Stone Cold, no, please," Spinelli pleaded. "It wasn't on the felt, just on the wood. And I cleaned it off and it didn't cause any imperfections or discolorations."

"What are you guys doing out here?" Sonny wanted to know as he poked his head out into the hall. "Dinner's getting cold, and you three idiots are out here talking about colors. Get in the penthouse right now."

Jason and Spinelli exchanged grim looks, and the boy quickly did as he was told and slipped into the penthouse. Jason followed, but not before skewering Max with a dark glare. The guard cleared his throat, loosened his tie, and thanked God that he didn't have to follow the other men into the penthouse.

Elizabeth was already seated at her place on Sonny's right, and she smiled at the three of them as they walked in. "Finally – let's eat. I'm absolutely starved. It's been a long day."

Jason grumbled under his breath as he slid into his seat across from hers. It had been a long day – and the worst part was that it was nowhere near over.

* * *

_The next morning…_

Jason was fed up with this shit.

He and Spinelli had come home after dinner and instead of drinking beer on the sofa, they had turned their penthouse upside down. Every surface was cleared, all the furniture was overturned, and every nook and cranny was thoroughly explored for anything that might qualify as a Weapon of Morgan Destruction.

Enough was enough, especially when he knew that there was someone out in the hallway that knew _exactly _what Elizabeth had done.

"Max? MAX!"

The bodyguard jumped and whirled around as Jason came storming into the hall. "Yes, Boss? Can I help you with…something?"

"I know you know what she did," the enforcer informed him. Max gulped, noticing his blazing eyes and the fact that his hands were curled into fists.

This did not bode well.

"And you're going to tell me exactly what that was so I can fix it and forget about it." Jason crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the guard. "Well?"

Max let out a slow breath. "Boss, I got…nothing."

"You wanna try that again?"

He shrugged helplessly. "No."

Jason's eyes narrowed. It was true: the guards were actually more loyal to Elizabeth than they were to their own employer. Well, technically, it was Sonny who employed them, but he wasn't chopped liver, either. "You sure about that?"

Max closed his eyes and nodded. "Yes, Sir, I am."

Jason gritted his teeth. "Fine. I want you to leave your shift."

His eyes flew open. "You're firing me?"

"No. I'm telling you to leave the Towers and go to the warehouse tonight: you're picking up all the graveyard shifts for three weeks."

Max's eyes darted around nervously. "Well, uh, Boss, you know I'd do whatever you told me-"

"Except tell me what Elizabeth did."

Wisely, he ignored the remark. "But, uh, I feel like I have to tell you…Mister Corinthos wouldn't like this one bit."

Jason arched a brow. "Really?"

Max nodded nervously. "Yeah. See, he really hates shift-switching. Doesn't allow it, except in very extreme situations, like if we've lost a few men on the job and need to fill slots."

This was news to Jason. "We used to pull you guys and switch your shifts all the time!"

"With all due respect, Jason, that was a long time ago," Max pointed out. "I know that's how we used to do it, but things have changed since then. It was actually Elizabeth who created that policy. It was back when we had a lot of dissension in the ranks and people were turning. Shift-switching was common then, and really dangerous because the wrong people were in the right places at the right – but for us, wrong – times.

"Elizabeth talked to Sonny and he let her take over the schedules. She set them straight and didn't allow anyone to switch. Anyone who tried to do it anyway was immediately investigated and more often than not, they were found to be working for the enemy. To this day, Mister Corinthos won't allow any of us to change our shifts without his approval."

No information could have annoyed Jason more at the moment than what he had just heard. His bodyguards were obeying Elizabeth over him, and it was because of _her _that he couldn't discipline them for it? Unbelievable.

"Fine. Sonny! Get out here!"

"Boss, I don't know what good that'll-"

"SONNY!"

Max turned around when he heard the doorknob turn, and the mobster soon poked his head out into the hallway.

"What the hell's going on?"

"Max needs to switch his door shifts," Jason informed him. "He's working graveyard at the warehouse from now on."

"What?" Sonny stared at his partner, puzzled, while Max shuffled his feet awkwardly between them. "No, he's not. Our schedules are very tight, Jason, and it took a lot of work on Elizabeth's part to get them that way. It's a finely oiled machine, and I'm not going to change anything about it. Besides, Max doesn't work graveyards; that's for the newer guards."

And with that, Sonny closed the door and returned to his business. Max cleared his throat uneasily, knowing that he'd have hell to pay for that.

Jason scowled at the closed door and then at his guard, but didn't trust himself to remain outside any longer. Instead, he turned on his heel and marched back into Penthouse II, making sure to slam the door behind him.

Letting out a relieved sigh, Max reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, using it to wipe his brow. So far, this Jason-and-Elizabeth liaison had given him nothing but grief. And he had a feeling it was far from over.

* * *

_That night…_

Jason watched Sonny out of the corner of his eye, waiting for his best friend to leave the main room of his penthouse and retreat into the kitchen to put the finishing touches on dinner. As soon as he had gone, the enforcer instantly turned around on the couch so that he was facing Elizabeth, who was sitting next to him reading a copy of _Einstein's Dreams_ that Spinelli had lent to her.

"I give up."

She glanced up at him, concerned, then returned to her book. "Well, you shouldn't. You have to work hard for what you want."

He rolled his eyes and stretched an arm onto the back of the couch, drawing her focus so that she had to look at him. "I meant about-"

Elizabeth batted her lashes. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"-whatever it was you did to pay me back." Jason's eyes narrowed as he finished, and the enforcer pursed his lips. "You know, it's more believable if you let me finish."

She smiled and set her book down, fully attentive. "Jason, I really don't have any idea what you're talking about. I told you – I let the whole thing go."

"I just want to know what you did," he insisted, setting a hand on her knee without even realizing it. All that mattered now was getting her to focus, and somehow getting her to admit to her little trick. "So tell me and I promise I'll make it up to you, and we can just forget about this."

Elizabeth laughed lightly and tossed her wavy hair over her shoulder. "Really, Jason, you're wasting your time."

"I told you that it was a bad move on my part," he sighed. "What the hell more do you want?"

"I don't want anything," she replied, her eyes wide. "And I don't know why you're pushing this so hard. Especially when there's _nothing to discuss_."

He hung his head. "What do you want? What will it take to make this whole thing go away?"

Elizabeth did her best to contain her smirk. Really, this was way too much fun. "What are you trying to say?"

"I'll buy you something," he offered. "Something shiny and expensive. Will that work?"

She wagged her finger at him. "Tsk, tsk, Jason, remember our rules? You don't buy gifts."

"I'll make an exception," he burst out. "Just tell me what you want. What, you want me to take you somewhere? Someplace hot and by the ocean? I can do that."

"It's a very nice offer, but I enjoy traveling with Sonny," she shrugged. "What else you got?"

Oh, he was going to throttle her. "Nothing but the shiny and expensive. Just tell me what color shiny and it's yours. Red? White? Green? Say the word."

His perplexed babbling was so amusing that Elizabeth just couldn't hold her laughter in anymore. And just when she was about to admit that she had done absolutely nothing except let him stew in his own guilt and paranoia, she heard Sonny's phone buzzing on the desk.

"Hold that thought," she grinned, tickling Jason's chin. "Let me answer this."

"But that's Sonny's phone," Jason replied, watching in confusion as she got up and made her way to the desk. "Don't answer that yourself – just call him. Sonny!"

But Elizabeth wasn't listening. She picked up the cell phone from the desk and flipped it on.

"Michael Corinthos."

Okay. Now, Jason could live with a lot of things. He could live with Elizabeth getting all the information on their business operations. He could live with her receiving files about associates and potential threats. He could live with her attacking his nerd – er, Spinelli – every so often. He could live with her speculating about the Five Familes and talking about elimination He could even live with her invading his penthouse.

But answering Sonny's phone? The same phone that he used to call hits and arrange shipment orders, the same phone that his men used to contact him with sensitive and graphic business information? That was just too much.

"Sonny – get out here!"

Elizabeth stomped her foot, telling him to shut the hell up, and he could see from her expression that whatever news she was receiving was bad.

"Oh, my God – you're sure, right? Okay. Okay, thanks. Leave it to me."

With that, she ended the call. Jason expected her to put the phone down and race into the kitchen to relay the news – whatever it may be – to Sonny, but was sorely disappointed and quite irritated when she appeared to be flipping through his phone book in search of another number.

"What's going on?" Sonny asked. "Dinner's just about ready, so-"

"You got a call," Jason explained, tipping his chin at the brunette. "She took it."

"Ritchie? Elizabeth." The brunette had her back turned to the guardian and didn't even realize that he was in the room. "Got a call from Paul at the PCPD. Taggert's planning a raid on Warehouse 13, 17, and 24. Yeah, tonight, eleven-fifteen on the dot."

Jason's eyes widened, and he would have lunged for the phone had Sonny not held him back. As it was, the mobster was watching Elizabeth carefully, waiting for her next words, and even Spinelli looked up from his handheld gaming device at the declaration of a raid.

"D.A.'s orders. You're supervising shipment – get the product out and move the coffee beans up front and center. No, don't worry – I'll call the guys at 13 and 17 and make sure they know to do the same. Yeah. Hurry – just make sure it's all out of there. Use the, uh, the storage unit…no, no, don't send it by water. That's the first place Taggert'll look, and it'll be out there in plain sight. Just send it by our decoy UPS trucks to the storage unit by Pier 52. Right, Quartermaine territory. I have the records still showing that Old Man Quartermaine owns the building, so they won't even think to check there. Good. Okay."

She ended the call and quickly dialed another one. "Marco? Raid on the warehouse at eleven-fifteen. Get everything out of there and send it by UPS to the storage unit on Pier 52. Ritchie's doing the same. Make sure to have the coffee out front with plenty of time to spare. I'm calling Johnny now."

Fortunately, the Irishman was on speed dial and it didn't take long at all to get a hold on him. "Raid on 13 at eleven-fifteen. Yeah, Taggert. Send the stuff through our UPS trucks up to the unit by Pier 52. Ritchie and Marco are on it already. Great."

She ended the call again only to make another one. "Stan? Dispatch our decoy UPS trucks. I need one each sent to 13 and 17 as soon as humanly possible, and two sent to 24. They're all picking up the shipments and heading to the unit on Pier 52. Yeah, the guys are waiting. Okay, thanks."

Letting out a relieved breath, Elizabeth flipped the phone off and ran a hand through her hair. "Oh, boy."

When she turned around, she saw that all three men were staring at her. With a little shrug, she held up the phone. "Crisis averted."

"Taggert's staging a raid on our warehouses, huh?" Sonny rubbed the corner of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. "If he had just been able to shut up about it, Paul at the PCPD wouldn't have had a chance to tell us."

Elizabeth laughed at the mention of their contact. "Yeah, he said that Scott just ordered Taggert to do it, and tonight. The way I figure it, Ritchie, Marco, and Johnny have about two hours to get all the stuff out, which they'll do with time to spare, and then have about thirty-five minutes to make it look like just another night at the boring old coffee warehouses."

She felt Jason's eyes boring into her, but Elizabeth didn't pause to acknowledge him as she set the phone back on the desk and smiled brightly at her guardian. "So, what's for dinner?"


	21. Chapter 21

**Hack 21**

"Make sure that Spinelli knows not to spend the whole day on campus today," Sonny told Jason as they cleaned up after breakfast. "Tagliati's anniversary party is tonight, and we need him there."

Jason frowned and handed Sonny a dirty plate. That was his contribution to the cleaning effort. "Why does Spinelli have to go?"

"They invited him," Sonny replied. "They invited all of us: me, you, Alexis, Elizabeth, and Spinelli. They even sent out a last minute invite for him when they found out that he was staying here. It would be rude of him not to go."

Jason nodded and took a seat on the chair that Elizabeth had vacated just a few minutes ago. "Fine. I'll let him know. God, I remember hating Tagliati's parties the last time I was here."

"Oh, he's loosened up a bit since then," his best friend laughed. "He's not anywhere near as stingy now, so there's always plenty of liquor at his parties. And that's always good."

Jason smirked and leaned on the back legs of his chair. "Where are Anthony and Bart now? Does he tell you what his kids are doing?"

"Anthony is at their home in Madrid, managing things there, and Bart is finishing up his Army training." Sonny turned around and headed into the kitchen, laden down with the dirty dishes. Finding little else to do, Jason followed.

"Anthony will be there tonight, but I don't think Bart could get away."

Jason nodded and leaned against the counter as Sonny set the dishes in the sink. "And all the other Family heads are going to be there?"

Sonny nodded. "Yeah."

He rinsed his hands and wiped them on a dishtowel before turning to his best friend. "And that is why it's going to be a great opportunity to figure out just who it was that took shots at me, and who it was that tipped off Scott and Taggert about our warehouses."

Jason smiled and crossed his arms over his chest. He had been thinking the exact same thing.

* * *

"Elizabeth?"

Jason poked his head into Penthouse VI and looked around, but the brunette was nowhere in sight. So he let himself in and hearing the sink running in the kitchen, followed the sound. She stood at the sink, wearing a pair of capris with about three layered t-shirts, scrubbing a large pot.

"Elizabeth?"

"Huh? Oh, hey, Jason," she replied, sounding a little less interested than usual.

He gestured to the pots. "Doesn't Sonny pay someone to do that for you?"

Elizabeth looked up curiously. "Why would he pay someone to do this for me?"

"Never mind."

She shrugged and resumed her scrubbing. "Actually, this is like the most relaxing part of the whole cooking experience. It's kind of cathartic, you know, zeroing in on this little piece of crud and rubbing and rubbing and rubbing until you completely wipe it out. Something about the whole process is just so…familiar."

She had a way of making him nervous when she said things like that. Not as nervous, however, as he'd been when she'd handled the phone call about the raid on the warehouses. Just the fact that Sonny would let her answer his phone made Jason uneasy. If Elizabeth harbored the least bit of disloyalty to Sonny, she could easily cause some serious damage.

"Something…wrong?"

"…Are you high?"

"No!" He glared at her and picked up a sponge. "Give me that – you're not doing it right. So, something bugging you or what?"

Elizabeth sighed and picked up another sponge and another soiled pot. "It's nothing, really. I just…had a little fight with Nikolas."

That got his attention. "About what?"

She sighed and scrubbed harder, shooting him an apologetic look when her elbow bumped into his arm. "A lot of little stupid things. The kind that really don't matter, but you bring them up when you're mad at someone for something bigger but you feel stupid actually talking about that bigger thing with them."

He smirked wryly, still scrubbing. "Yeah, I know. What do you think the bigger thing was?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "He's just mad that we're not spending as much time together as we used to, and he blames you for that. So we fought."

Good. "Oh."

She nodded sadly. "Yeah. It sucks because he's just about my closest friend in the whole world. He's so sweet and generous and noble, and he's so caring and protective of me. He's always been there when I needed him, he gives great advice, he's kind, he's so forgiving of everyone around him…He's just the greatest man I've ever known, right along with Sonny."

Jason shifted uneasily, unaccustomed to the guilt that crept up on him. "Oh."

"And I hate it when we're not talking." She blew her bangs out of her face and scrubbed harder. "We always talked. About everything. It didn't matter how stupid it was – if it was bugging me or making me feel bad, he was always ready to talk about it. I really miss that when we fight."

He shifted his weight and focused solely on the pot in his hands. "What about the other guys? Stan, Max, them?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "Don't get me wrong, they're wonderful guys, all of them. Max is a complete teddy bear, and Johnny's hilarious. Milo's just the sweetest, Stan's my fellow hacker extraordinaire, and Ritchie is the fun one. But…they're not Nikolas."

She let out a heavy sigh and pouted at the sparkling pot. Jason eyed her carefully, not sure what to say, and barely sure of why he felt so damn guilty all of a sudden.

"And it felt like it came out of the blue, you know? This whole thing." She shook her head and set the pot down on the counter, then reached for a greasy oven pan. "We were supposed to hang out and shoot pool at Jake's last night-"

Jason's eyes flew to hers. He had no idea that she and Nikolas were still planning little meetings of their own. "Last night?"

Elizabeth nodded absently. "Yeah. And so I get there and I order a round for us and he picks this fight about how he can't believe that I'm blowing him off all the time and how I picked you over him when he and I have been so close ever since I came to live at Harborview, and he just wouldn't listen to me."

Jason smirked to himself and twirled the pot by both its handles before setting it on the rack and reaching for a smaller one. That was right – Elizabeth had picked him over Nikolas and his old friend would just have to deal.

"I mean, it didn't matter how many times I told him that I didn't pick you over him, and how I would never do that," Elizabeth continued earnestly, entirely oblivious to his suddenly flabbergasted expression. "I tried to tell him that there's nothing serious going on between you and me – I said, I'm not anywhere near as close to Jason as I am to you – and I told him that there never would be anything serious between us, but I guess he'd already made up his mind."

She sighed, her forlorn and frustrated expression oddly similar to the one on Jason's face. "It just sucks when something you thought was good gets messed up."

"Yeah."

Elizabeth remained silent for a long moment, and after that appeared to shake herself out of it. "So, what are you doing here?"

Jason shrugged and turned on the tap in order to rinse the pot. "Just came to see what you were doing. We've got Tagliati's party to go to in a couple hours, you know."

She nodded. "Yeah, Sonny, Alexis, and I go every year. It's usually pretty fun. He's not so stingy with his liquor anymore."

Jason chuckled. "Yeah, Sonny told me."

"It's probably not going to be your scene," the brunette cringed. "Think of it as a kind of raucous cocktail party. It starts out really nice and then turns into something of a free for all. By the end of the night, there's dancing and singing, and someone's always making a drunk speech, and a bunch of the older guys start gambling in the corner, and the younger ones all go out onto the balcony or terraces to smoke or have random sexual encounters…"

He had to laugh at that. "Sounds like a party."

Elizabeth giggled and elbowed him. "Well, it's pretty amusing, I have to give them that much."

"Dragon? DRAGON!"

Someone – obviously Spinelli – was in the penthouse and seemed to be looking for her. Elizabeth turned off the tap and set her oven pan on the counter.

"In here, nerd. What do you want?"

"Oh, Dragon," the boy sighed, finally spotting her and trotting into the kitchen. "I need – Oh. Stone Cold."

His green eyes darted suspiciously back and forth between the two. "What are you doing here? Why are you doing dishes together?"

"We're not," Jason replied defensively.

Spinelli stared at the pot in his hands.

The enforcer glanced down and quickly set the pot on the dish rack. "What do you need, Spinelli?"

"I just came over to ask the Dragon something," he replied carefully, still staring skeptically at his mentor. "You never answered my question."

"Needed to talk to Elizabeth about…the party tonight," Jason answered, folding his arms over his chest. "What's it to you, anyway?"

"Oh, the Jackal actually came by to do the same," Spinelli beamed. "Dragon, I was wondering about the dress code for this little shindig. Can I wear my plaid shorts or are we going fancy-pants?"

"It's a regular cocktail party," Elizabeth snorted. "You know, girls in dresses, guys in black suits. You don't need a tux, but you definitely can't go in your plaid shorts and your striped sports jacket."

"Oh," Spinelli frowned, pondering the contents of his wardrobe. "So I suppose the floral silk shirt is out. Darn it, that was my best shirt. I thought I had that in the bag."

Elizabeth shook her head. "You know, all this time, I thought that was a gag shirt. I couldn't believe that you'd ever be serious about that."

Spinelli glared at her, but he was well used to her insulting his wardrobe. The one time she'd caught him by surprise was when Jason was making fun of his plaid shorts, and Elizabeth had said that she liked them and that only a real man could pull off plaid. That had been a good day.

"So are you wearing a dress or what? I've never seen the Dragon in a dress. You'd better get one that's flame-retardant."

Elizabeth looked up from drying her hands on a dishtowel. "Yeah, I'm wearing a dress. I still haven't picked out which one, though. To be honest, I've been putting it off. I never have good luck with dresses. Last year, I showed up at Don Tagliati's party in the same exact dress – different color, though – as his wife, and she's at least forty years older than me!"

The brunette laughed and shook her head. "It was so _mortifying_. I'm going to have to hurt someone if I do that again this year."

Spinelli shrugged. "Well, it doesn't help that you look like you shop at Octogenarians 'R' Us. What, does Mister Corinthos Sir object to you showing off the goods or something?"

Elizabeth shook her head as Jason glared. "Not really. He's never said two words about how I dress."

The same, however, could not be said about the two men currently standing in her kitchen. In fact, Jason had once asked Sonny about Elizabeth's peculiar dressing habits and her need to constantly add layers. Sonny had confessed that it puzzled him, too, but that he had noticed that around the same time that she was making remarkable strides in her recovery and physical therapy.

He had discussed it with Dr. Lainey Winters, and together they had come to the conclusion that it had everything to do with the accident and that the layers were Elizabeth's subconscious need to shield her body from everything around it: a primitive defense mechanism that manifested itself in her apparel. And Sonny had been content to leave it at that. When he'd said as much to Jason, the enforcer also thought it best not to bring it up again with the brunette.

"Okay, well, I should go find my good pants," Spinelli announced. "Later, Stone Cold. Dragon."

Elizabeth frowned at the boy's back as he walked out of her kitchen. Jason, noticing her sour expression, nudged her with his elbow.

"What?"

She glanced up at him and arched a brow. "By his 'good pants,' Nerd means the ones that _didn't _sprout when we ran through the sprinklers on campus this morning."

She shook her head and scrubbed a hand over her face. "How much do you want to bet that I'm going to have to dress him?"

* * *

"You're wearing this and I don't want to hear a whole big thing about it."

Spinelli, who had just come downstairs in his black pants, cream-colored shirt, black sports jacket with green patches on the elbow, and a maroon beanie, stopped and stared at the garment bag in Elizabeth's hand as she marched into Penthouse II.

"But, Dragon, the Jackal is already dressed," he said, gesturing to his outfit. "I was just coming downstairs to ask Stone Cold if he liked it."

Elizabeth took one look at his outfit before deciding she couldn't handle it. "Those colors don't just clash, nerd – they're staging full-on genocide."

"I think it looks spiffy."

"It doesn't."

"That's a matter of opinion. Entirely subjective."

"About as subjective as my foot up your ass if you don't put on this suit I just bought you."

Spinelli turned to Jason for help, but the enforcer shook his head and pointed to Elizabeth's garment bag. "Aw, do I have to?"

"Yes," the brunette replied tersely, grabbing his elbow and pulling him toward the stairs. "Come on. You're going to put this on and I'm going to figure out how to get your hair to stop looking so dopey. Move."

"Don't you have to be getting ready?" Jason heard Spinelli ask as he was forced up the stairs. "Did you even pick out a dress yet?"

"My dress troubles are none of your concern. But you know what is your concern? It's called deodorant. My God, you smell like old socks and Doritos."

Jason smirked and flopped down on the couch, groping around under the cushion for the remote. It amused him how Elizabeth often took Spinelli in hand that way. It was a good thing because in all their years abroad, Jason had never really taken any time or care to discipline Spinelli. He generally let things fly. Now that they were back home and getting used to a steady routine, it would be good for the kid to always have Elizabeth watching out for him.

He had just found the remote when Spinelli somehow miraculously got away from Elizabeth and came charging down the steps with that puppy-dog look in his eyes.

"Stone Cold, do I _have _to?" he pleaded as Elizabeth came stomping down after him.

Jason grinned when the brunette grabbed the boy by the collar of his shirt and yanked him back. "Yes. She's just trying to make sure you look nice and don't embarrass us."

The kids were scuffling on the landing when the door to Penthouse II flew open and Sonny marched in, holding a large black garment bag in his hands as well. Jason assumed there was a sale at Nordstrom's or something.

"Jason, good," Sonny greeted him, coming to a stop by the sofa and holding out the bag. "You're wearing this suit I just bought you, and I don't want to hear a whole big thing about it."

* * *

Elizabeth and Sonny were waiting downstairs for Jason and Spinelli to change. Sonny had already donned an elegant black suit, but Elizabeth was still in her capris. They milled around at the foot of the stairs, waiting for the two men, and looked up when they heard them come down.

Jason was a step ahead of Spinelli and was already fidgeting in the simple black suit that Sonny had purchased for him. He was fixing the collar of his blue shirt but stopped when Elizabeth began to hop up and down.

"Oh, Jason, you look like a real boy!" she beamed, leaning to the side to catch a glimpse of Spinelli. "And the nerd doesn't look half bad, either."

"I look damn good," Spinelli announced proudly, brushing invisible lint off his lapel. And it was true: he'd gotten a complete makeover thanks to Elizabeth. She had made sure his new suit was freshly pressed, had ironed the shirt she'd gotten him, polished his shoes, and made him sit still while she combed a mild detangler through his hair and parted it. "I've never worn a suit before. These things are so classy."

He preened for a moment longer, even allowing Elizabeth to straighten his collar and fix the pressed handkerchief in his pocket. When she stood back, satisfied, it gave the boy an opportunity to inspect her clothing.

"You're still not dressed," he pointed out. "We have to leave in half an hour."

Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, I should go pick something out…"

Impatient now, Spinelli grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the door. "Come on, Dragon. I get to pick your dress."

"What? No way!" Elizabeth squawked, trying to free herself. "You'll pick out something horrible."

"You picked my outfit, I get to pick out yours," he reasoned. "And whatever the Jackal picks, the Dragon must wear."

* * *

"Don't you boys look nice," Alexis beamed as she stepped out of the elevator. It was a warm night, so the lawyer had forgone a jacket and was merely wearing a silk shawl over her knee-length black cocktail dress. "Jason, you clean up very well, and don't you let anyone tell you otherwise."

The enforcer nodded and was about to say something when Alexis tightened his tie and smoothed his lapel, then turned around and did the same to Sonny, who sent Jason a look that said to just put up with it. Even though Alexis's OCD was extremely mild in comparison to other cases, she still had her certain tics.

Jason discreetly loosened his tie. Sonny had specifically asked him to wear it because it looked nice with his shirt, but he was already planning to ditch it in the limo before they arrived at Tagliati's.

"So where's Elizabeth? And Damien?"

"We're coming," the boy called out from down the hall, and Jason watched as he hurriedly beckoned Elizabeth to follow. "We're ready!"

"Just gotta grab my purse," they could hear Elizabeth say, and then the brunette darted out into the hall, letting Spinelli close the door behind her. "Okay, all ready. Hi, Alexis. You look nice."

"Thanks, dear," she smiled. "So do you. Gosh, I never see you in anything that actually shows your knees."

That was true: most of Elizabeth's dresses and skirts were at least that long. Tonight, however, with Spinelli picking out her dress, the brunette looked a little different. Jason's eyes widened as she stepped into the light and let Spinelli lead her by the arm closer to the elevator. The two of them, all scrubbed and freshly pressed, looked as if they were going to prom together.

Even though he suspected Elizabeth's dress was a little too PG-13 for that kind of scene.

It was a dark blue little number that matched her eyes and made her skin glow in contrast, with a modest sweetheart neckline and little capelet sleeves. It also happened to be one of the shortest dresses he'd ever seen, the fitted long bodice flowing into a snug ruffled skirt that ended just above mid-thigh. And Jason had a feeling that he had Spinelli to thank for that. Or hurt for that. One of the two.

If he had been counting on Sonny to tell her to get her little ass back in the penthouse and put something on that wouldn't have every man there sniffing around her the whole night, Jason was sorely disappointed. Sonny inspected her briefly, then took Alexis's arm and led her into the elevator.

"Great. Let's go."

Spinelli, still ridiculously pleased with his appearance, offered his arm to Elizabeth. The brunette took it happily and stepped onto the elevator with him, leaving Jason in the hall.

"Stone Cold? Aren't you coming?"

Jason pursed his lips together and reluctantly stepped on. It was going to be a long night.

* * *

So far…he hated it.

The party was a bust. Sure, everyone else seemed to be having a great time, but Jason was absolutely dead-set on the party being a total and complete bust.

All of the Families, as well as other bosses and certain lower level members of the syndicates, were present and accounted for, as were their spouses (or girlfriends), children, select bodyguards, and attorneys.

Everyone had separated into little groups. Alexis was off with the rest of the defense attorneys in one of Tagliati's sitting rooms, where they were drinking wine and probably discussing tortes or whatever the hell it was lawyers did in their downtime. Spinelli had found a group of young men his age and, after some awkward small talk, joined them in a game of cards in one of the drawing rooms.

He and Sonny remained in the main ballroom of the house with most of the other guests. A bar was set up in the corner, a live band was playing, the doors to the terrace were wide open, and Tagliati and his wife flitted from group to group, making sure everyone was having a lovely time.

The host and hostess had been welcoming enough when they had first arrived – Jason had to give them that. Tagliati had shaken his, Sonny's and Spinelli's hand warmly and urged them to go see the other guests. Tagliati's wife, a tall, lanky woman by the name of Lucia, had immediately taken Elizabeth's hand after Alexis had sneaked off to find her lawyer friends.

The woman seemed to be genuinely affectionate toward the little brunette and complimented her on her racy little dress, saying that young women should wear such things while they were still young and could pull off the look. She then spirited Elizabeth away to a group of other young women – most of whom were also pushing polite cocktail envelopes by wearing flirty little dresses – but only let her stay there long enough for introductions before she set off trying to match Elizabeth up with her nephew, who had flown in from Miami that morning.

So Jason had remained near Sonny for most of the evening, sipping a glass of scotch and obliging the occasional questions and remarks with an obligatory nod of the head. Sonny, on the other hand, chatted and shmoozed with the best of them, making sure he got a little face-time with just about every important player in the room.

It was amusing to see how his and Sonny's approaches differed. They were both after the same thing, after all: information about the warehouse raids and the incident outside The Locust Tree. It was possible that something was brewing within the Families, and it was their job to find out. While Sonny liked to do that by chatting up every single man there, Jason preferred to play it strong and silent.

And while he was playing it strong and silent, he also kept an eye out for Elizabeth and Spinelli. His charge disappeared out onto the terrace for a little while, then followed his group of new friends out of the room and into one of the smaller sitting rooms, and he had poked back into the main ballroom a couple times since then, never making contact.

And while it didn't especially bother him not to see Spinelli very frequently, it did bother Jason to see Elizabeth so frequently. They hadn't shared a word since their arrival, and it seemed that he couldn't turn around in the main ballroom without seeing her on the arm of a young man. First it was Tagliati's wife's nephew, then one of Tagliati's sons. Then she was having a drink with the sons of one of the other Dons, and then she was dancing with yet another.

It wasn't supposed to irk him, but it did. She was really making the rounds tonight, laughing and smiling and batting her lashes, dressed in that snug little dress that fluttered with every step, and despite his better judgment telling him not to be such a pussy, Jason didn't like it.

It was none of his business who she talked to or laughed with or smiled at or batted her lashes for. And he certainly wasn't about to ruin a good no-strings-attached thing by going and getting jealous, which was one of Elizabeth's deal-breakers in the first place. But he just didn't like this.

Spinelli appeared out of nowhere just then and brushed against Jason's arm, reaching out to accept his drink. "I need to talk to you later," he murmured discreetly against the rim of his glass, and before Jason could say anything else the boy retreated once more.

Well, that was weird. Jason rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the tension there, and looked around the room. Several hours had passed since they first arrived and it was late now. Hopefully, they could get out of here soon.

He had completed a half-turn when his eyes caught Elizabeth's for the first time that night. She was sipping a fruity little drink and standing by the terrace, letting the cool breeze fan her slightly flushed skin. She arched a brow at him, glared, batted her lashes, and then repeated the whole process.

Either she wanted to talk to him or she had something in her eye.

Clearing his throat awkwardly, Jason looked around the room. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and crossed the dance floor toward the terrace, Elizabeth's dark eyes beckoning him forth all the while.

He stopped in front of her, feeling like an awkward teenage boy and furious with himself for that, then abruptly stuck out his hand. "Dance with me."

"Love to," she beamed, placing her small hand in his. Jason tugged her forward and lead her onto the floor, then slipped an arm around her and pulled her closer.

"Not here," she murmured, noting their position a few feet away from the center of the room. "Over there, that darker corner."

He did as he was asked, discreetly leading her in that direction. She was a reasonable dancer and didn't seem to expect much from him. She was content to just let him rely on the simpler moves and they swayed together, moving across a relatively small radius in the dimly lit corner of the room.

"I need to talk to you," she murmured, arching her neck so that her lips were a scant distance from his ear. "I think I know who was responsible for tipping Taggert and Scott off."

Jason's eyes widened and he pulled back, but Elizabeth held him close so that it wasn't noticeable. "What? You weren't supposed to do that – you weren't supposed to ask any questions or anything. That's what Sonny and I are here for. He wanted you and Spinelli to enjoy yourselves, so he didn't say anything."

Elizabeth bit her lip and looked slightly chagrined. "Oh. Well…what can I say? Old habits die hard, I guess. Because it looked to me like the nerd was doing some recon work of his own. He said to pass along a message and say that he needed to talk to you."

Jason closed his eyes and turned her easily even though his mind was hardly on the rhythm of the slow dance. "Jesus."

Elizabeth remained quiet for a few minutes, then tapped his chest with her fingers. "So? Do you want to know or not?"

The enforcer opened his eyes wearily, as if it took colossal effort, and nodded. "Fine. What did you get?"

"I think it was Tagliati's enforcer."

The corner of his mouth quirked up, not from amusement, but because that was the man Jason suspected as well. "Why?"

She licked her lips and glanced around the room, not noticing how his eyes immediately zoomed in on her mouth when she did that. "Okay, don't get mad, but I was dancing with him earlier, and-"

Jason snorted. "Why would I get mad?"

Elizabeth eyed him suspiciously. "I didn't mean you'd get mad about me dancing with Paolo. Obviously, it's none of your business who I dance with."

Though relieved that she hadn't realized he'd tipped his hand just slightly, Jason was still a little irritated that she thought it was none of his business. "Well?"

"Okay, so don't get mad, but when I was dancing with him, we started talking about the business. Oh, relax," she huffed, smacking his chest lightly with the hand that he held in his. "I'm not so stupid that I'd say anything important. And neither is he."

Jason grumbled under his breath and looked over her shoulder, partly trying to avoid looking suspiciously like he was discussing something important and partly to get himself to stop smelling her hair. "Go on."

"So he expressed his regrets about the incident at the Locust Tree," she continued, easing just a little closer so that she could lower her voice and still be heard. "I thanked him, and then he started talking about Tagliati having a brush with the law a little while ago, just like us with Taggert and D.A. Baldwin."

He smoothed a hand up her back, playing with the ends of her hair before smoothing it right back down as he tried to keep up the appearance of a casual dance. He and Sonny never discussed business between themselves when they were at parties because they never knew who might be listening in.

His fingers splayed at the small of her back and Jason could have imagined it, but it felt like Elizabeth's breath hitched just a little.

"So I just said that, yeah, it was a close one but we followed the procedure that you'd set in place years ago before you left," she elaborated. "And so he keeps talking about business and the next thing I know, he's telling me that between me and him, things are looking a little rocky for some of the families and the northern regions, which is where we fall, and he said that if I ever needed a job, I should contact him and he'd get Tagliati to hook me up."

Jason swore under his breath. "Stupid son of a bitch."

"It was him, right?" Elizabeth's wide eyes peered up at him. "That means it was Tagliati that probably set this whole thing in motion, right? Trying to scare Sonny into something? Like giving up his territory or his routes or something? Am I right?"

"You're right," Jason murmured, lowering his head so that his lips brushed her cheek. "That was a really bad slip on his part. I talked to Paolo earlier and had the same thought, but he was being really careful not to say too much. He has to be the one trying to stir something up. And if he's involved, it means that Tagliat is the one trying to strong-arm Sonny."

Elizabeth was nibbling on her lip when he pulled back and straightened. "What made you think it was Paolo, anyway?"

"I always shake hands when I meet someone for the first time that night and again when we're done talking," Jason explained. "I could feel it in his pulse. It was slower when I first shook his hand, but after he finished talking to me and Sonny about business, his pulse was quicker. Like he was nervous or excited."

"Hey, that's pretty cool," she grinned. "You have to show me how to do that."

"You just have to squeeze hard enough and feel with your palm and fingertips," he smirked. "It's not hard."

"Dirty."

"Stop."

She laughed into his shoulder as he turned her gracefully. "And to think that I wasn't looking forward to tonight. It was actually fun: good food, plenty of booze, a little friendly espionage-"

"You weren't supposed to be doing that," Jason reminded her. "Sonny and I still know how to run the business, believe it or not."

She smiled at that. "I don't recall saying you didn't. I just like to help."

"Take over, you mean," he muttered, nudging her playfully. "Like you did with the shipments."

"Well, to be fair, that was standard procedure," Elizabeth informed him. "You should know that – you're the one that put it in place before you left."

She had mentioned that thought earlier, and it still confused him. "What?"

"Don't you remember?" she asked. "Sonny said that when you guys ran the business together, you were the one that had him make up a bunch of fake UPS trucks and a few armored bank cars just in case you needed to transfer shipments. And that you always transferred at-risk shipments to storage units that weren't too close by. He made it sound like it had always been standard procedure."

Jason frowned, trying to think. "I don't remember that."

"Well, if Sonny said it then it has to be true," Elizabeth reasoned. "And besides, I've seen Sonny do that whenever he thinks the shipments are in danger. I was just repeating what I've seen him do a hundred times."

"Brainless mimicry?" Jason teased, grinning wickedly when her expression soured. "Isn't that what you call it?"

"Not funny," she muttered, tightening her grip on his broad shoulder. "And so not applicable!"

Jason laughed and pulled her closer. "Whatever you need to tell yourself."

Elizabeth laughed against his neck but sobered up when she saw a certain curious young man across the room. "Not so close, not so close: the nerd is looking right at us."

But Jason just tugged her forward and smirked. "Let him look."


	22. Chapter 22

**Hack 22**

Spinelli had come up with a plan of his own the night of Tagliati's anniversary party. Unbeknownst to Sonny and Jason, he had smuggled a bug and an earpiece inside his suit to the party and after latching onto a group of young mobsters his own age, had planted the device in the library. He'd almost gotten caught by Tagliati, too, but at the last minute pretended to peruse the impressive literary collection. Thankfully, he'd gotten away with it.

He'd worn the earpiece in his ear all night, thankful that his long hair fell over his ear the way Elizabeth had parted it. While Elizabeth danced with and charmed Tagliati's enforcer Paolo Alvarado, Spinelli was sitting on the periphery of his circle of new friends, pretending to pay attention to the gambling instead of his little earplug.

His patience had paid off because as he stood out on the terrace smoking, having bummed a few cigarettes from his new chums, he could make out the click of a door and suddenly heard hushed voices.

Spinelli had smoked his cigarettes conservatively, buying himself all the time he could out on the secluded terrace. During that time, he heard Tagliati's enforcer talking to some mystery man that sounded a lot like Tagliati – although he couldn't be sure – about their plans to acquire new territory and routes by putting the heat on Sonny Corinthos and Jason Morgan. It was too bad, because Spinelli had liked Don Sammy Tagliati almost instantly and was a little sad that Jason would have to kill him.

The conversation ended with his last cigarette, and the two mobsters left the library. Spinelli snuffed out his last cigarette on the stone ledge and moved quickly back into the ballroom. He spotted Elizabeth dancing with Don Salvatore's son and waited until she was done before casually breezing past her and telling her that he knew something and to tell Stone Cold should the opportunity arise. He then made tracks to the library and carefully removed his device along with his fingertips, thanks to the little green handkerchief Elizabeth had folded and placed in his pocket.

This information, along with news of Elizabeth's job offer, was shared with Sonny and Jason once they were all back at Harborview. Jason had been angry, but his best friend had talked him down and said that the kids were just trying to help, and their evidence only corroborated what Sonny and Jason had already discovered on their own. Still, the kids were both told to knock it off in the future.

And now the information was in the right hands, and it was Sonny and Jason who would decide how to proceed from there.

Naturally, Tagliati and his enforcer would be disciplined.

* * *

Elizabeth hummed to herself as she headed down the hallway to Penthouse II – it would be a cold day in Hell before she referred to it as 'Jason's penthouse' – and knocked on the door. Without waiting for a reply, she threw it open and skipped on in.

"Hey, Jason, you want to take the bike out for a midnight-"

She stopped when she saw Jason and Sonny standing by the closet, with Spinelli lounging on the couch with his gameboy. Jason was putting a black box back up on the top shelf of his closet and barely spared her a glance.

"Can't tonight," he said, straightening his black sweater. He was dressed in all black tonight, an odd look for him. He was almost always to be found in his blue jeans, and even though he looked striking, Elizabeth didn't know how to feel about the change.

"Wait until you get a clear shot," Sonny was saying as Jason patted the pockets of his cargo pants, making sure he had everything. "We need this to be a clean job. And I'm not going to say anything else because you know how to do your job."

Jason grunted and picked up a black duffel bag, hefting it easily. Whatever was inside clacked ominously, and Elizabeth's brows furrowed. "Okay, I'll call you when it's done. Just make sure you've got my alibi."

"As far as anyone knows, you and I are having dinner at my penthouse with Elizabeth and Spinelli," Sonny replied on cue.

"Check it," Spinelli called from the couch. "I got your back, Stone Cold."

"Wait – what's going on?" Elizabeth broke in, eyeing Jason's outfit and the black duffel bag but still puzzling over Sonny and Spinelli's words. "What are you doing?"

Jason stared at her, pausing as he zipped up his duffel. "What do you think? I'm taking out Alvarado."

"Don Tagliati's enforcer?" she asked. "What do you mean, you're – Oh."

Jason rolled his eyes and made sure he had everything one last time. "Okay, so – I'll call when it's done. See you. Spinelli, no ordering pizza while I'm gone. I'll find the damn box."

"Fine," the boy grumbled. "But I'm drinking your beer."

"You always do," Jason muttered, gently brushing Elizabeth to the side so he could reach the door. "And you better be in bed before I get back."

"Wait, wait," Elizabeth interrupted, grabbing his forearm. "You're leaving? Just like that? Do you have to?"

He stared at her as if she'd lost her mind. "…Yeah, I do. This is my job. I'm going to sit in a tree for an hour, pull the trigger, and come back home. Move, you're making me late."

Her mind was racing, and Elizabeth kept a firm hold on his arm. "Wait, but – aren't there people you can pay to do this for you?"

That made him laugh. "Did you forget that this is what _I_ get paid to do?"

In all honesty, she had – not that she'd ever admit it. Jason and Spinelli had been home for weeks and Sonny had never ordered a hit on anyone in that time – except that one contact that disappeared to South America, necessitating that Sonny ask one of his contacts down there to finish the job – so she had never had a chance to see Jason all suited up. Now that he was standing in front of her dressed in black with what had to be a sniper's rifled in his duffel bag…she didn't quite know what to say.

"So you're really going to do this?"

Sonny chuckled and moved forward, gently prying her fingers from his best friend's arm. He put another hand on her shoulder and gently pulled the brunette toward him, holding her while Jason once again tried to leave.

"Sweetheart, it's nothing to worry about. Jason's been doing this for years now."

"Stupid Dragon." Even Spinelli was in agreement on this one, and he apparently saw nothing wrong with sending Jason off into the night to go get shot at.

Jason's eyes met hers as he stepped out into the hall and the enforcer must have read the quiet worry there because he nodded at her, sparing her a meaningful look, before gently closing the penthouse door.

* * *

"Elizabeth? I made your favorite, sweetheart. Here, have some." Sonny set a bowl on the dining table in front of his ward and frowned when she made no move to take it, much less acknowledge it. Spinelli, on the other hand, was already wolfing his down and getting more than half of it on his face.

"It's pudding. You like pudding."

Elizabeth picked up the spoon and absently swirled it in the thick chocolate, itself a rarity in Sonny's home. "Thanks. It looks good."

Sonny watched her for a long moment, then sighed and took a seat next to her. "What's the matter, sweetheart? Still worried about Jason?"

The gentle question caused Spinelli to slow down in his inhalation of the chocolate pudding and eye them suspiciously. He had already caught an eyeful of Stone Cold and the Dragon dancing at Tagliati's, as had everyone else in the room, and it was a bit more than he had been able to stomach at the time.

"You don't have to be, you know," Sonny reasoned. "He's been doing this for years, Elizabeth. Since before I even met you that first time at Kelly's. And he's very, very good at it. He's kept me safe while he lived here, and he's kept Spinelli safe these past four years, and he'll keep you safe, too, for a long time to come. There's no reason to worry. He should be calling in any minute now."

"It's not that," Elizabeth answered wearily. "I just have this really weird feeling that something bad is going to happen."

"I get that, too, sometimes," Spinelli offered helpfully. "It almost always turns out to be indigestion."

"I know what indigestion feels like, you stupid nerd."

"You're the nerd," he fired back, pleased to see a recognizable amount of animation from his fearsome Dragon. "You and your Buddy Holly glasses."

"At least my optical nerves will still be intact by the time I'm thirty," she replied, sticking her tongue out at him.

"Okay, that's enough," Sonny broke in. Breaking up their little fights had become second nature to him now. "Why don't you two eat your pudding?"

"She started it," Spinelli muttered just before he stuck a heaping spoonful in his mouth. "Tricksy Dragon."

Sonny rolled his eyes and got up from the table. He slipped his hands into his pockets as he passed his desk and glanced fleetingly at the phone, wondering just when Jason would call in. These assignments usually went pretty smoothly and he should be getting word of it any minute now.

* * *

He'd been discovered.

He didn't know how, he didn't know by whom, but none of that really mattered amidst the din of men's voices and the barking of the dogs.

Jason hit the call button he wore on his belt, alerting his driver that they needed to make a break for it, and unsnapped his rifle. He shoved it into the case, strapped it easily and securely to his back, and waited.

The room that he'd kept watch on for about ten minutes was empty; the men meeting inside moved to a more secure location on the other side of the house while sending the guards outside to kill the intruder. Four of them came around the corner, and Jason gripped his silver Glock firmly. It was smaller and easier to handle than the sniper's rifle and always got him out of a jam, and this time would be no different.

He steadied his hand, braced the butt, and fired off four shots in rapid succession, hitting each man that was sent to chase him down like a dog. Two fell instantly and the others staggered from the flesh wounds he had inflicted.

That was the break Jason needed. He hooked his hand around a branch and quickly lowered himself down. He hit the ground running and didn't look back, even when bullets whizzed right by his head, one narrowly missing his flank. An engine roared a short distance away, and he knew that Ritchie already had the car started and was waiting for him to jump on.

He pushed himself harder, knowing it was just a matter of a few yards now, even as the men and voices gathered behind him. Ritchie had reached across and thrown the passenger door open, and Jason gripped it with his free hand as the guard slammed on the gas.

He thought he'd made it when his pursuers sprayed another round of bullets at the SUV. Two exploded against the bullet-proof glass as Jason hoisted himself into the moving vehicle. He yelled at Ritchie to veer away as fast as he could, and the car screeched and squealed as the guard did as he was told. The sound of the brakes and then the roar of the engine masked the last few bullets, one of which managed to hit its mark. Jason almost had the door closed when he felt a sharp explosion of pure fire high on his leg, and then the passenger door slammed shut and the SUV raced away under the cover of darkness.

* * *

Sonny Corinthos felt like his head was going to explode.

For the past half an hour, Elizabeth and Spinelli had been sitting at his dining room table arguing very passionately about something. The problem was that Sonny had no idea what. All he knew was that it was important and it was technical and it was heated and it made him want to bash his head against a rock.

"All I'm saying is that computer technology is far more intricate and has far more potential than we mortals could ever hope to realize," Spinelli argued. "The circuitry in a single computer chip is easily ten times more complex and powerful than the circuitry in a single human brain."

"That's ridiculous," Elizabeth snorted, pounding her small fist on the table. "Anyone who thinks that is an idiot!"

"How can you be so small-minded? It's a simple fact: we engineered these incredible pieces of machinery that every single day astound us with their capabilities! Capabilities that we didn't even plan or create or hope for! We made them but they took off on their own."

Clearly, Elizabeth wasn't buying it. "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. The human brain is the most complex and intricate hunk of circuitry imaginable! Computers only _wish _they had brains."

"But they do have brains," Spinelli insisted. "That's my whole point. Our supercomputers have managed to far exceed our expectations AND our blueprints! How can you argue with something like that?"

"Because nothing is superior to the human brain," Elizabeth argued. "Nothing. You can say otherwise til you're blue in the face, but I'll never believe you. Computers can only do what we program them to do and nothing more."

"Two words," Spinelli smirked. "Deep Blue."

Now, Sonny vaguely knew what that was about. He wasn't a hundred percent on it, but he remembered Elizabeth and Stan talking about it once. Deep Blue was some sort of supercomputer that had been created by IBM to play chess. It computed brilliant moves and composed stunning chess plays, and there had been quite a commotion when Kasparov, some guy who was apparently really good at chess, had agreed to play a tournament with the computer to see who was better at chess. The computer had won, corroborating Spinelli's argument.

Sonny just hoped he'd understand whatever Elizabeth's rebuttal turned out to be.

The brunette was sitting back with an equally smug look on her face. "Proves nothing."

"What do you mean, it proves nothing?" the boy squawked. "Deep Blue _owned _Kasparov. The Nautically Named Supercomputer was made of win! It proved once and for all that man could make a piece of machinery even more intelligent than he was. It was analogous to the other equally profound paradox of our time: Deep Blue proved that Jesus Christ could microwave a burrito so hot that even He Himself could not eat it."

"First, first-century Israelites did not eat burritos," Elizabeth scoffed. "And second, Deep Blue proved nothing. Any true computer buff knows that."

"Any true computer buff knows that he's only as good as his machine," Spinelli disagreed. "You have no evidence for what you're saying, Dragon. You've yet to offer any."

"The difference is, you choose to think that the computer won, which it did," she explained. "Fine. But you're not looking at the big picture."

The big picture, naturally, was Elizabeth's specialty.

"Deep Blue won because Kasparov was playing a serious game," the brunette said, so engrossed in the discussion at hand that she didn't even hear Sonny's phone ring in the background. "There was not one but two things Kasparov could have done that would have caused Deep Blue to have a meltdown."

"Yeah? Name 'em."

"First, Kasparov could have made a totally bogus move." She shrugged her shoulders and leaned back in her chair. "Say, he could have moved his king up front first. Something completely out of the blue and a _ridiculous _move to boot. Deep Blue wouldn't have known how to compute that because it had only been programmed with the more standard initial moves."

Spinelli's eyes narrowed as he studied his adversary, and the boy didn't notice that across the room, Sonny wore the same expression as he listened carefully to the caller.

"Second…" Elizabeth smiled and rolled her eyes. "He could have shown up and suggested that they play checkers instead of chess."

"That's cheating," Spinelli countered. "There has to be-"

"How is that cheating? Both of those methods are totally reasonable: the first one shows that man is the only one whose brain is equipped to deal with the unexpected and unimaginable. The second one shows that man is the only one whose brain can function in a versatile way."

"That's the cheapest cop-out I ever heard. You lose, Dragon."

"I lose? You lose, you stupid nerd!"

"Guys!" Sonny's voice, harsh and firm, broke up their little spat and both Elizabeth and Spinelli spun around to stare at him. "Knock it off."

He turned his back and switched the phone to his other ear. "No – wait, I'm losing you – listen, I don't care if it didn't go through, as long as he's fine – what? Why the hell is he going to a safe house? What? Ritchie, I can't – Oh."

The line went dead and Sonny stared at his phone, his jaw slack.

Elizabeth and Spinelli exchanged nervous glances and tried to catch the mobster's eye, but Sonny was too far gone. Finally, Elizabeth cleared her throat.

"Sonny? What happened?"

"Is Stone Cold okay?"

The mobster turned around and blinked several times, as if pulling himself out of it, and then he was reaching for the phone again, hurriedly calling another contact. He gave them the best explanation he could before he put the phone to his ear again and pulled the mob doctor out of a sound sleep.

"Jason's been shot."


	23. Chapter 23

**Hack 23**

It was well past midnight when they got the news of Jason having been shot.

Elizabeth and Spinelli had been on their feet instantly, each one wanting to know what they could do. Sonny had his hands full alternately calming them down and shooing them away so he could call in the mob doctor and make arrangements for Jason's safety and health.

First, he'd made sure that he knew which safehouse Ritchie had taken Jason to. Then he had Stan check in on the situation and with a couple of the other guards, make sure that Jason hadn't been followed or identified. Then he called the mob doctor and told him to get to Harborview immediately where a car would take him and only him to the safehouse where Jason was. Then he checked in with Ritchie to see how Jason was doing. Then he gave Francis very detailed instructions to escort Dr. Drake to the safehouse and follow all procedure to make sure they weren't spotted or followed. And all the while, he waited for his main phone to ring with news that Tagliati knew that he and Jason were behind the hit on his enforcer.

Thankfully, that phone call never came and Sonny was able to take care of everything to ensure Jason's safety. Spinelli and Elizabeth had been impossible to deal with, and he'd eventually had to lock them on the balcony in order to get any work done. Fortunately, it was a warm night. The neighbors probably wouldn't be too happy with the yelling and the racket so late at night, but who would they complain to? He owned the whole damn building.

About an hour later, he let the kids back into the penthouse. They were furious with him for the stunt, but were willing to forgo their anger in return for being told how they could help Jason. And Sonny had the unpleasant task of informing them that until he got the call from Patrick explaining precisely what had happened, there was nothing that the two of them could do.

Naturally, they both wanted to go to the safehouse and see Jason for themselves. And naturally, Sonny refused. It was dangerous enough to send an additional guard and a doctor to a safehouse this late at night, and especially after a botched hit. If Tagliati wasn't already suspicious, he had only to monitor the cars leaving the Harborview Garage to be so. It was far too risky for himself, Spinelli, Elizabeth or any of the other guards to leave the Towers.

They got the call from Patrick at about two-twenty in the morning. A bullet had been lodged in Jason's upper thigh. Thankfully, there was no arterial damage – otherwise he'd be dead, the young doctor tactlessly informed him – and little muscle damage, thanks to the fact that the bullet had been removed so quickly and effectively.

Patrick liked to pat himself on the back whenever he could, and this time was no exception.

Jason had gotten dizzy from the loss of blood and the intolerable pain, so Ritchie had been forced to take him to a secluded safehouse instead of returning to the Towers. The enforcer had already passed out by the time Patrick arrived, which made the emergency surgery much easier than the doctor had initially anticipated. But the bullet was out and Jason would heal, even though he was in a lot of pain and refusing pain medication. Still, Patrick suspected that he'd be back in trees with his trusty sniper's rifle in no time.

Elizabeth and Spinelli nibbled their nails throughout this whole account. Sonny had barely finished relaying the news when the two interrupted and asked when they could go see Jason. Unfortunately, any trip to the safehouse was still extremely risky, and even Patrick was advised to stay there for the rest of the night and depart at daybreak.

Seeing little else he could do, Sonny made Elizabeth and Spinelli leave his penthouse, urging them to try to get some rest before the next day. Unable to do so, the duo retired to Penthouse II and camped out on the sofa, their heavy silence occasionally broken by quiet, nervous conversation of Stone Cold's health and fate.

They had been extremely lucky not to be discovered. Both Elizabeth and Spinelli knew that. This was no small-time hit: Jason and Sonny had planned to take down one of the enforcers of the Five Families. He was lucky to have escaped with only a bullet in the leg.

Spinelli fell into a twitchy, fitful sleep around five, and Elizabeth stared at the wall until the boy awoke an hour later. Hearing sounds across the hall, they trudged back over to Penthouse IV and found Sonny on the phone. He was talking to Patrick, who was already on his way back to his apartment, and told the kids that Jason would be coming home in about an hour or two, depending on when Ritchie and Francis felt it safe to move him. He then made arrangements for the trip while Elizabeth and Spinelli tried to busy themselves with something that would eat up the time.

Spinelli settled on cleaning up Penthouse II and making a nutritious smoothie for Stone Cold to enjoy once he returned. Elizabeth settled on cooking breakfast and putting on a pot of soup. That was what Sonny always made her drink when she was sick – that and freshly squeezed orange juice – and she figured that as his best friend, it was probably a remedy that Jason was well used to by now.

"Dragon? You want some of my Mango Madness milkshake?"

She turned around when Spinelli entered Sonny's kitchen. "Not really, Spinelli. I'm not in the mood."

"It's full of fiber and antioxidants and lots of lots of energy," he promised, sliding the glass her way. "Try a little. It'll make you feel better."

He had been nice to her since they found out about Jason. She had no idea why. Still, Elizabeth didn't want to rock the boat so she took the milkshake and took a big gulp.

"You hungry? I just made crepes. Give me a second and you can have a spinach and feta cheese omelet with that."

"Couldn't eat," the boy declined, gripping his stomach. "What do you think is taking Stone Cold so long?"

"Ritchie and Francis are really meticulous," she explained slowly. "They pay a lot of attention to detail, and they're not going to move one second before they think it's safe to do so."

The boy nodded and played with the edges of a frayed dishtowel. "You know, this is the first time he's gotten shot in the leg."

"You've seen him get shot before?"

Spinelli nodded. "Oh, yeah, lots of times. He picked up two in the arm when we were in Spain. Got one in the right side and three in the left when we were in France, Italy, and Monaco. He got grazed on the side of the head in Argentina – if you look real close, you can see just a little nick where his hair's not really growing back too well. Uh, let's see…That's all I can remember."

He blinked at Elizabeth's look of abject horror. "What, you've never seen Mister Corinthos Sir get shot?"

"In front of me? Definitely not!" she denied. "Shot _at_, sure, but I've never personally seen him take a bullet. He's been shot and wounded a couple times, but he never lets me see him until Patrick has him all bandaged up."

She tossed her hair over her shoulder and wearily began to gather it into a messy ponytail. "He's very private and careful about things like that. I guess he doesn't want to upset me. Once he got shot in the stomach, and he made Max and Johnny keep me out of the penthouse until Patrick had inspected the wound, gotten the bullet out, stopped most of the bleeding, reapplied clean bandages, and hopped him up on pain killers. I've never even seen him wearing so much as a dirty bandage."

Spinelli nodded and rested his chin on his folded arms, finally understanding part of what had the Dragon so upset over the news of Stone Cold's injury.

* * *

Sonny shot out into the hallway the second he heard the elevator ring and waited anxiously along with Max as the doors slowly opened. They saw Jason first, looking disheveled and rumpled and very pale, then Ritchie. The guard had one arm around Jason's torso and used the other one to keep the enforcer's arm around his neck. Together, they moved slowly out into the hallway.

"Oh, thank God," Sonny murmured, quickly going to his friend. Spinelli and Elizabeth came running out from the kitchen and plastered themselves along the doorframe, wanting to see but not wanting to get too close and slow them down.

Ignoring Jason's protests and his weak attempts to resist, Sonny took his best friend's free arm and draped it over his shoulder, helping him along. The enforcer was already breathing hard from the exertion.

"My bedroom's fine."

"Yeah, like you're in any shape to climb stairs," Ritchie snorted, forgetting himself for a moment. Upon receiving a harsh glare, he was quickly reminded. "Sorry, Boss."

"He's right," Sonny intervened, drawing Jason's irritation away from the guard. His best friend's injury looked much worse than he had initially anticipated. "You can barely hold yourself up – we're not taking you back to your penthouse. You'll stay in the guest bedroom in mine, the same one you used to stay in."

"The one by the kitchen that used to be the maid's room?" Elizabeth asked. She waited until she saw Sonny nod before grabbing Spinelli and trotting off to make sure it was ready. It would take the three men a few minutes, at the very least, to maneuver Jason inside and she figured that was plenty of time to spread the spare sheets.

Together, she and Spinelli snapped the fitted sheets in place, laid down clean linen, fluffed the flat pillows, and cracked the windows for some fresh air. Elizabeth sent Spinelli upstairs to get more pillows and some extra sheets for Jason, and he was racing up the stairs as Ritchie and Sonny brought Jason in.

The enforcer swore under his breath and lowered himself onto the bed. He attempted to remove his shoes without bending down too far but found it impossible to do so without sending waves of excruciating pain through his legs. So he swore again, clearly believing that to aid in the process of removal.

Elizabeth huffed and bent down, reaching for his boots. Jason grunted and tried to move his foot away, and let out a bark when she smacked the shin of his good leg.

"The hell was that for?"

"Stop being stupid and let us take off your shoes," she ordered, lifting his heel and tugging the boot off. Spinelli removed the other one and then peeled off his mentor's socks while Sonny arranged the pillows.

"Can you get in on your own?"

Jason grunted and made a valiant effort, but he had lost a lot of his strength from both the blood loss and the constant excruciating pain. Knowing that it killed his best friend to have others see him like this, Sonny brushed the kids aside and helped Jason scoot back into bed. The effort caused the enforcer to break out in a cold sweat, and Elizabeth could see him grind his teeth together against the pain.

"We need to get him the best horse tranquilizers out there," Elizabeth announced. "Something to take the edge off. Why hasn't Patrick prescribed him something yet?"

"Stone Cold doesn't like pain killers," Spinelli explained. "He doesn't like how they knock him out, and how he can't do anything when he takes them."

"Oh, for God's sake," she huffed, talking to him as if Jason wasn't even in the room. "What does he have to do, neuroscience? He's in bed for at least a week with nothing to do but sit on his butt and watch daytime soap operas. A few pain killers aren't going to be the end of the world."

"No pain medication," Jason barked, bracing his hands on the mattress and slowly inching himself downward so that he could rest his head on the pillows. "I don't want any."

"But-"

"Elizabeth." His eyes flashed as he looked into hers. "No. Pain. Medication."

Her lips thinned and she crossed her arms over her chest. "Fine. Deal with it on your own, then. Such a baby."

"Can we ease up on some of the insults until he's feeling a little better?" Sonny teased. "Okay, so, Spinelli, you make sure he's comfortable. Elizabeth, Jason might want to undress, so you're going to have to leave the room."

Despite the gravity of the situation, Elizabeth, Ritchie, and Max smirked. Jason appeared to color slightly, and then the enforcer swore darkly and hunkered down amongst the pillows.

"Come on, sweetheart. We'll go outside and we'll wait for Patrick," Sonny said, ushering her out. "Guys – Ritchie? Max? Let's go. There's still a lot of work to be done. Elizabeth, sweetheart, I believe there was some mention of soup. Why don't you go get Jason a big bowl of that? Jason, you want soup?"

"No."

"Good, that'll fix him right up," Sonny continued, having honestly not even heard Jason's answer in addition to not caring. "You see to that, and I'll see what's taking Patrick so long."

"All right, Stone Cold," Spinelli announced, rubbing his hands together. "Let's get you out of those jeans."

The enforcer glared up at him. "You know, _that _is exactly why people get the wrong idea about us."

* * *

"Jason? Patrick's here."

Spinelli, who by now had helped his mentor strip down to his boxers and get under the sheets, moved away from the bed and sat down on one of the chairs by the dresser as Elizabeth, Patrick and Sonny walked in. Jason hated the intrusions and lack of privacy in this sensitive situation, but there was little he could reasonably do about it. After all, he had to get the wound checked out again.

"Good to see you again, Jason." All business, Patrick moved over to the bedside of a man he'd just met for the first time last night and threw back the sheets. He sat down at Jason's side and examined the bandage as Sonny hovered. Elizabeth, who had also been wanting to get her first real look at the wound, sat down right next to Jason and watched Patrick work.

"The bleeding hasn't slowed down as much as I'd hoped," he murmured, taking a pair of surgical scissors and snipping off the bandages. Jason grunted and shifted, his fingers already curling into the sheets as air hit the fresh wound.

"But all things considered, it's looking much better," he announced, nodding proudly at Sonny and Elizabeth. Jason glared at the back of the doctor's head, hating how Patrick Drake always liked to talk _about _his patients rather than _to _them.

"What kind of a recovery time are we talking about, O Prudent Practitioner?" Spinelli wanted to know.

"A week or two in bed ought to do it," Patrick replied, his strong hands examining the flesh. Jason hissed and let out a long string of curse words, an utterance that didn't surprise a single other person in the room. Without even thinking about it, Elizabeth reached over and closed her hand over his, letting him squeeze her fingers as she watched Patrick work, entirely engrossed in the process.

"We don't want to put too much strain on the muscle," the doctor continued, talking more to Elizabeth now when he realized how close she was. "In fact, if he keeps off of it, it might heal in a week's time. So don't let him get up or walk around or try to put any weight on it before then."

Sonny nodded, mentally recording every last word out of Patrick's mouth. "Is there anything else we need to do?"

Patrick helped Jason lift his thigh and began to carefully wrap a clean bandage around it. "Dress the wound regularly to keep it clean and to fight off infection. That's about all there is to it. Make sure he eats and rests and drinks plenty of fluids, of course, just to keep his health up. He's weak from the blood loss and the shock, so we need to watch out for that."

Jason snarled and clenched Elizabeth's fingers tighter when Patrick accidentally wound the bandage too tight. Son of a bitch doctor. There he went again with his 'we' and 'he,' as if Jason wasn't even there to begin with. It was just the kind of treatment he'd received from the staff of General Hospital when he woke from the accident, and it wasn't something he had an easy time getting over.

"Jason, one last thing."

Ah, so the asshole actually knew how to address a person.

"I wish you'd let me prescribe you some pain medication," Patrick continued, oblivious to the dark look he was receiving. "Your body has undergone tremendous strain and trauma, and if you would-"

"No pain killers," Jason ground out. "How many fucking times do I have to tell you, I don't-"

"He doesn't want any pills, thank you, Patrick," Sonny interrupted politely. "Thanks again for coming over. We'll keep in touch. I'll have one of my men drive you back."

Spinelli moved back over to Jason's side to fill up his glass with water as Elizabeth and Sonny escorted Patrick out. The brunette waved Sonny off, letting him know that it was okay to retreat into the kitchen and make some phone calls and that she would escort Patrick out.

Standing in the doorway, Patrick cast one last concerned glance at Jason, who was watching him discreetly out of the corner of his eye. "He's in so much pain."

"I know," Elizabeth murmured. "But he's very stubborn."

"Yeah, I kind of figured that out," the doctor chuckled. "I tried everything to get him to take a few pills last night. Nothing worked."

"Leave it to me," she murmured back, moving just a little closer so Patrick could slip her the prescription he'd pulled out of his pocket and tried to offer Jason. "I'll talk him into it."

"Okay," the doctor smiled, relieved that his patient would finally get some relief of his own. He leaned down and kissed Elizabeth's cheek. "Take care, and call me if you need anything."

"Later, Patrick," she called out, slipping the pills into her pocket before Sonny could return and find them in her hand. When the young doctor disappeared from view, Elizabeth turned around and smiled at Jason.

"I think I'm going to get you that soup now."

* * *

"Tagliati wasn't there."

Sonny frowned and leaned forward. "You're sure? This was a meeting that Paolo Alvarado attended – why would the enforcer be there, but not the boss?"

Jason shook his head, trying to resist Elizabeth's attempts to feed him. Really, this was already humiliating enough. "I don't know. But I remember it. I was sitting in the tree and had a full view of the room. Alvarado the enforcer was there, his right-hand man Tomasini was there, but Tagliati wasn't. But Don Salvatore was."

Spinelli snapped his fingers. "Don Salvatore – yes, Grey 'Stache. I remember him."

"Grey 'Stache?" Elizabeth repeated, trying unsuccessfully to cram a spoonful of soup down Jason's throat. "What?"

"Because he has a silver mustache," Spinelli explained. "Anyway, the Jackal remembers now: Grey 'Stache was the one that I heard the Evil Enforcer talking to in the library when we were at Don Tagliati's house! I couldn't place the voice, but now I remember. It was him."

"So there's a chance that Tagliati's not in on this at all," Sonny mused. "Is Alvarado striking out on his own?"

Jason snatched the bowl of soup from Elizabeth, glaring at her to let her know he was more than capable of feeding himself. The events of the previous night were beginning to catch up to him, and he was feeling very warm despite it being a cool morning. He raised a spoonful to his lips and swallowed.

"I don't remember much else," he got out. "Just those faces. And I couldn't hear much of the conversation, but they were definitely planning a move on our territory."

Sonny let out a sigh and scrubbed a hand over his mouth. "Okay, it's fine. Don't worry about it anymore – I'll handle this. You drink your soup and rest. Call us if you need _anything_."

He rose from his seat and beckoned the kids forward. "Guys, come on, let him sleep. Spinelli, you should eat something. Come on."

Elizabeth and Spinelli dutifully followed Sonny out the door and into the kitchen. Once there, Spinelli began to rummage through the fridge for some remains of the breakfast Elizabeth had made and then shelved. Sonny drifted off to his office to take care of business, and Elizabeth decided to make herself some hot tea.

"This looks like it's pretty big," Spinelli mused, pulling out a carton of orange juice. "If the enforcer from one family is going behind his boss's back to take Mister Corinthos Sir and Stone Cold down, this could turn into a mob war, right?"

"Let's hope not," Elizabeth shuddered. "Because if worse comes to worst, Sonny and Jason are going to ship us off to the island so fast we'll get whiplash."

Spinelli blinked. "They wouldn't let us stay here and help?"

She laughed and shook her head. "Are you kidding? If this turned into a _real _mob war, they'd say that there was nothing we could do and send us to the island to windsurf until things calmed down."

"Has Mister Corinthos Sir shipped you off before?"

"Just once," Elizabeth replied. "When things got _really _bad. Worst two weeks of my life: sitting there by the ocean with nothing to do but eat and read, wondering if Sonny was still alive…yeah, not anxious to go through that again. Hopefully they can take care of this before it goes too far."

"Hey, how much soup did you make for Stone Cold?" Spinelli wanted to know as he peeked in the pot. "Is there any way the Jackal could get in on that?"

"Help yourself," she shrugged. "I'm going to go see if Jason wants any more."

"I'll come with." Spinelli followed Elizabeth out of the kitchen and down the hall, waiting a step behind her as she poked her head inside. "Well?"

She gently pushed the door fully open and stood back, smiling. An empty bowl sat on the nightstand, and Jason was out cold. Spinelli gaped at his mentor and then at the brunette.

"What – what happened to him?"

Elizabeth shrugged playfully and moved into the room to retrieve the bowl. "I crushed up a few morphine pills into his soup. He'll be out like a light for the next four hours."

Spinelli stood stock still, only his eyes following her as the brunette happily walked down the hall to the kitchen. "…Yeah, and that's not at all creepy."

* * *

His mouth tasted like an old sock.

Jason groaned, trying to crack open his eyes without making his headache any worse. Apparently he'd fallen asleep for a few minutes there, and that was all the time it took for everything to go to hell. His leg, which had felt better, was now throbbing with a dull ache. His mouth was dry, his head hurt, and he was hot all over.

A soft knock at the door felt like it was echoing in his head, and the enforcer winced. He tried to say something, but nothing more than a weak croak escaped him.

The door opened a crack and Elizabeth poked her head in. "Hey. How're you feeling?"

Jason muttered something incoherent even to himself and closed his eyes, thinking that she'd go away and let him sleep it off. Instead, he heard the door creak and then her soft footsteps on the carpet. Then the mattress dipped with her weight, and he felt something cool and wet on his forehead that felt absolutely wonderful.

"You're getting a little warm," he heard her murmur. "I'm going to take your temperature, okay? Open your mouth."

She inserted the thermometer and readjusted the wet washcloth on his forehead. "If you're feeling up to it, I could get Sonny to make you a sandwich for dinner, maybe with another bowl of soup. You look like you could use it."

He cracked one eye open and looked at her. "Dinner?"

"Don't talk, idiot," she scolded, pressing a finger over his lips. "Yes, dinner. It's five o'clock. You've been out cold for the past seven hours. I didn't think three morphine pills could do that."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes when his eyes widened. "Yes, I drugged you. A thank you would be nice, you know."

"I told you-"

"No talking," she repeated, pressing her finger firmly over his mouth again. "Honestly, no respect. A girl goes through all the trouble of medicating your soup, and you can only grunt about it. Okay, let's see what we have…"

He snarled as soon as she pulled the thermometer from his mouth. "I _told _you that I didn't want any pain killers. I told you repeatedly. You had no business-"

Elizabeth's eyes widened, but it wasn't because of his litany, and before Jason knew it the brunette was hopping off the bed. "I've gotta call Patrick."

* * *

"Is he doing any better?"

Elizabeth shrugged wearily. It had been almost two hours since she'd gotten off the phone with Patrick Drake after telling him that his patient had a fever of almost 104. Since Jason refused to go to the hospital – for understandable reasons – and since Patrick was working his shift at the free clinic, she'd written down all of his instructions and carried them out herself. She would have appreciated a little help, but Sonny was locked up in his office trying to run damage control with the Families, her bodyguard friends were all out beefing up security and helping Stan and the accountants, and Spinelli was God-knows-where doing God-knows-what. Stupid nerd, always disappearing when there was work to be done.

So she had no choice but to do it all herself. She changed Jason's makeshift cold compress every half hour, took his temperature every twenty minutes to monitor even the slightest decrease, made him drink water and some of her Gatorade – which he hated – every ten minutes, and did her best to keep him cool.

Of course, occasionally he had to get up and 'take a leak,' as he'd coarsely put it, and there was no way she was handling that. Since the nerd wasn't around, Elizabeth would just march on up to Sonny's office and demand that he put the phone down and help Jason.

While this was going on, she'd tried her best to get a hold of Spinelli. But the nerd wasn't answering his phone, which kept sending her straight to voicemail, and after leaving about five profanity-laced messages, Elizabeth gave up and resigned herself to the fact that she was the best hope for a nurse Jason had. And that was pretty sad because she could barely nurse a beer, much less a person.

He was fast asleep when she entered his room, and Sonny was trying to tidy up. He'd drawn the curtains and gathered up all the dirty bowls and empty bottles of water when she opened up the medical kit Patrick had left with her and got out the bandages.

"What are you doing?"

Elizabeth turned around and held up the clean white roll. "We need to change his bandages – he bled through them a little."

Sonny looked at her as if she'd lost her mind. "Since when do you know how to change bandages?"

She shrugged and sat down next to Jason, gingerly edging the sheet back and trying her best not to rouse him. The poor guy had finally managed to go back to sleep and didn't need her jostling him.

"No, it's okay, I crushed a pill into his Gatorade," Sonny said, helping her adjust his leg so they could get a good look at the bandages. "He'll be out for at least two hours."

He shrugged at her quizzical look. "What? Someone had to do it. He's in such terrible pain, and he's as stubborn as a mule."

"Well, between you and me, we're probably going to send him on one heck of a trip with all this morphine."

Sonny smirked until he realized her meaning. "You mean you drugged him, too?"

She shrugged. "Just a little."

The mobster let out a sigh. "We should probably check base with each other from now on unless we want him stoned for the rest of the month. You sure you know what you're doing with those?"

Elizabeth nodded as she snipped off the soiled cloth. "It's not rocket science, Sonny."

"I know that, I just meant that you'd never done it before, and if you want me to, I can try to-"

"I've done it before."

That was news to him. "What? When? I've _never _let you get near me when I was hurt."

She huffed her bangs out of her face and gently began to wrap up the wound anew. "Remember when Ritchie got shot in the side? And when Johnny got shot in his right arm and had to wear a sling for three weeks? I changed their bandages every time I went over to their apartment."

"I thought you were delivering food for them."

"And changing their bandages."

Sonny scrubbed a hand over his mouth and shook his head. "I can't believe they let you do that. They should have told me – I would have gotten them a day nurse or something. It would have been better than you having to swab up blood and touch dirty bandages…"

He trailed off and grimaced, not even wanting to consider the type of gore she'd seen. Elizabeth smiled and rolled her eyes, well used to Sonny's way, and secured the bandage. "Okay, that should do it."

"I'll stay with him for a while," Sonny offered. He reached over and brought a small cushioned armchair closer to the bed. "If he wakes up or anything."

She nodded and gathered the bloodied cloth for disposal. "Great. That'll give me a chance to shower, change, and get some food. You want anything?"

He shook his head. "Haven't had a chance to make anything, and Spinelli ate whatever was left in the fridge. Where is he, anyway?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "I have no idea. I've been trying to get a hold of him all day."

"He probably just needs time to process this," Sonny mused, carefully lowering himself down into the chair. "Can you do me a favor? Get my phone from upstairs, and the file right by it. Might as well take care of some business while I'm down here. And order in something for yourself – I don't want you skipping any more meals."

She nodded and trudged out into the hallway, needing nothing more at the moment than a nice, hot shower to relax her muscles. She was just about halfway to the kitchen when she heard Sonny's voice.

"Sweetheart?"

"Yeah?"

He leaned back a little so that he could see her. "Thank you for taking care of him while we were busy. We're all lucky you're around."

* * *

He was going to kill her.

That was the conclusion that Jason came to when he literally came to and glanced at the clock, seeing that it was a little past one in the morning.

She'd gone and drugged him. The damn stupid woman, she'd gone and fucking drugged him. Knowing how he felt about pain medication, how he felt about being laid up with an injury, how he felt about feeling fuzzy and disoriented, she'd still gone and drugged him. She'd probably put it in that disgusting neon blue swill she made him drink. Gatoright or something stupid like that.

She must have been loving this, seeing him virtually immobilized by the bullet wound. He couldn't get up, he could barely sit up, he couldn't walk, he couldn't fucking do anything. He was completely at her mercy and boy, did she take advantage of that.

She was always exercising her authority over him, rubbing in the fact that he couldn't even take a piss on his own. She was there every five minutes with something she wanted to feed him or make him drink or stick into his mouth. She had to be loving this.

At least Sonny and Spinelli had the decency to leave him alone. Those two knew him better than anyone in the world, and they knew that he hated letting others see him in a position of weakness. They knew how degrading it was for him to barely be able to lift his own damn leg and only interacted with him on a need basis. They didn't hover, they didn't sit around and talk to him about stupid things – they just let him sleep.

And now that he'd slept almost all of the day away, he felt better. He'd felt like shit when he'd woken up in the evening with a fever, but it must have gone down by now because the fuzzy feeling in his head wasn't there any longer, nor was he radiating heat like a furnace. In fact, he was actually feeling much better.

He let out a slow yawn, taking the opportunity to stretch out the muscles of his upper body and stopped when he heard a little snort, followed by a light hum that faded soon enough. There was someone else in the room.

His eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness, but he still couldn't make anyone out. Slowly, Jason eased himself up onto his elbows, propping most of his weight there, and looked around. And that was when he saw her. She was sitting awkwardly in a cushioned armchair by the foot of his bed, a light throw blanket over her lap and her head resting in a strange angle against the side. There was a book in her lap, and her finger was still marking the page even as she rested her chin hard against the knuckles of her other hand.

Jason didn't know how long he sat there and stared at her, as if believing that she was an apparition than actually accepting the fact that she was sleeping at the foot of his bed. Finally, he slowly relaxed back onto the pillows and closed his eyes, his ears straining to pick up the light sound of her breathing that eventually lulled him back to sleep.


	24. Chapter 24

**Hack 24**

Sonny passed a steaming mug of Columbian Roast to Jason and cocked his head, eyeing Elizabeth skeptically. "She really slept there all night?"

Jason shrugged and took a small sip. "She was there when I woke up in the middle of the night. I didn't even hear her come in. I must have been out cold."

His best friend nodded knowingly. "Yeah, you must have been."

His deliberate tone caused Jason to pause, and the enforcer slid him a sidelong look. "You had her fucking drug me again."

Sonny grimaced and took a sip of his coffee. "Watch your mouth. I haven't said much to you when you do that, but I generally don't swear around Elizabeth."

"She fucking drugged me!"

"She did not," Sonny replied hotly. "I gave you four extra-strength aspirin, that's all. And I don't care about your whining and your posturing, Jason – you're in pain, and you're too stupid to take care of yourself. That's where I come in."

Their bickering roused Elizabeth, who grumbled something under her breath and shifted in the chair, cat-like, before slowly cracking her eyes open and blinking against the early morning light.

Jason and Sonny both stared back at her.

"Fuck!"

Sonny winced and Jason watched, amused, as Elizabeth shot up out of the chair and dashed out the door. "So much for not swearing around her. She figured those extra words out after all."

His best friend frowned at him. "Shut up."

"Why didn't anyone wake me up?" they heard her bluster from the other room. "I had to email a powerpoint presentation to Dr. Jackson in time for class – and I haven't even started it yet! I don't have time for this!"

Sonny took a step closer to the door. "Don't have time for what, sweetheart?"

"Breakfast! Jason! Questions! Any of this!"

"Just checking," he called, turning back to his friend and taking another sip of his coffee. "She's busy."

"I figured," Jason muttered, hunkering down in bed and reaching for the morning paper. He had no idea he was such an inconvenience to her. "You heard from Spinelli at all?"

Sonny shook his head. "No, not at all. You want me to have Milo go find him?"

"If you could," Jason replied. In the other room, they could hear Elizabeth flipping through a book with one hand and furiously clicking away with her stylus with the other. "I don't even know if he made it in last night, and I just need to be sure he's okay. That kid doesn't know anything half the time."

"Don't worry about it, I'll tell the boys to track him down right now." Sonny nodded to himself and headed for the door. "Oh, and I'll bring you your breakfast while I'm at it. How does toast, bacon, eggs and orange juice sound?"

Jason glared at his best friend's back. "You gonna crush aspirin into the juice?"

"Oh, most definitely."

* * *

"You summoned me, Stone Cold?"

Jason looked up from the morning paper when Spinelli poked his head into the bedroom. "Yeah. Where the hell have you been? You didn't call or pick up your cell or anything."

"The Jackal did not mean to worry you, Stone Cold," the boy replied, humbly entering the room with his computer case and sitting down at the foot of Jason's bed. "And I'm sorry that I didn't call in to see how you were. It's just that I figured you…well, whenever you get hurt, you don't like people to see you like that. So I figured I'd make myself scarce until you were mobile and not so…cantankerous."

"I'm not cantankerous."

"Of course not," Spinelli replied immediately. "Perish the thought, Stone Cold."

"What the hell have you been doing all this time?"

The boy removed the strap of his computer case and held it in his lap. "The Jackal has been working non-stop, around the clock, to find the Evil Doers that are responsible for your current predicament."

That got Jason's attention and brightened his mood. "Yeah? You find anything?"

"I talked to the NightNinja and got him to grant me access to his database on your mobly associates," he explained. "From there, I was able to contact one of the men who works with Don Tagliati's enforcer – the one who's our contact – and he helped me get access to security footage. That took forever."

His friend was intrigued by this. "Where have you been working on this?"

"I commandeered an empty office at the warehouse." Spinelli puffed out his chest proudly. "I put orange soda in the mini fridge, got out my Gumby paperweight, and put up a poster of Arwyn. It's like the Jackal's own private abode."

Jason didn't know what that meant, but he felt the general message sounded promising. "So you've been working all this time?"

Spinelli nodded. "I thought it would be best to do it at the warehouse because the Dragon has our place bugged. This way, she has no idea that I'm about to crack this thing open like an egg."

"That's good," Jason grinned. "You sure you can figure this all out? Get Stan on it if you need help."

"I'm all over this, Stone Cold," the boy huffed. "Trust me. The Evil Doers don't stand a chance…and neither does the Dragon."

He smiled wickedly and stroked his computer case. "See, this is what I was trying to tell Mister Corinthos Sir – _this _is why you don't bring a girl into the business. The Dragon hasn't even been _thinking _about catching your assailants. This is what girls do when something like this happens: they get all mothery and Glenda the Good Witchy and they just want to feed you and fix you and read to you and cuddle you."

Spinelli paused and eyed Jason warily. "She didn't try to cuddle you, did she?"

"No!"

"Okay, good," he sighed with relief. "You can never be too sure. Anyway, they get all cuddly and they completely lose sight of what's really important. They can't take action, and they just don't know what to do. It's no place for a girl, but a Jackal? This is where the Jackal thrives."

"Okay, go thrive," Jason replied, shooing him off the bed. "See this through before Elizabeth finds out."

"Can you keep her distracted?" the boy asked hopefully. "She seems to be into this whole nurturing thing right now. Can you play it up and just keep her distracted with you? I need to buy some time here."

Jason nodded and waved him out the door. "Yeah, I can do that."

"Great, thanks, Stone Cold," Spinelli beamed. "I'll get right back to work, but first I have to go to Kelly's and get some food. There's this really carpe diem blonde waitress named Lulu or something there, and I'm trying to work up the courage to flirt with her."

"You mean caliente, not carpe diem."

"Right, that's what I meant. Okay, buenas nachos, Stone Cold!"

* * *

He had been able to keep Elizabeth busy for the rest of the day, but she hadn't shown up to bring him breakfast the following morning and Jason was starting to get a little concerned. Sonny said that she had gone to class and called to say that she'd be a little late getting back home.

She was about an hour and a half late, to be exact, and by the time she reappeared it was about lunchtime.

"Hey, hey, hey," the brunette sang out as she waltzed into his room with a large bag of take-out and a box set of DVDs. "How you feeling?"

"Not bad," he replied slowly, watching her as she set the bag down on the table and began taking out containers. "What is that stuff?"

"Lunch. I thought you might be hungry. Where's the nerd? I brought him a sandwich."

"He's probably fooling around at the warehouse," Jason replied quickly. It wasn't a total lie. "He'll be back whenever he gets back. He'll eat then."

She didn't reply and instead handed him his food after arranging it prettily on a bedside tray. "You in any pain?"

Jason shook his head. "Fine."

"Are your bandages clean?"

"Changed them myself this morning."

Her lips parted in surprise. "Jason, you should have called me or Sonny, we would have done it."

He shrugged, trying not to analyze the fact that it made him feel good when she wanted to take care of him. "It's fine. What are those?"

Elizabeth glanced at the DVDs on the bed. "Oh, those. I stopped by Johnny and Ritchie's place before swinging by Kelly's, and they said that you'd like these."

"I don't really watch movies."

She barely heard him as she thumbed through the titles. "They said that you guys used to watch some of these back in the day, and they included some others that they thought you'd like. Oooh, Bradley Pitt."

She held up the case for _Fight Club_. "I've never seen this, but I've heard it was good. It's not going to be too bloody, do you think? Oh, well, it doesn't matter."

Jason watched her hips sway as Elizabeth headed over to the DVD player and television that Sonny had the guards move into the bedroom earlier. "Let's watch Brad Pitt be hot."

Even though he wasn't fully on board with watching any guy be hot, Jason just sat quietly in bed and waited for Elizabeth to slide the disc in, grab her own sandwich, and join him. He thought she'd take the armchair by his bed and was surprised when she skirted around the corner and climbed onto the mattress, pitching her shoes onto the floor and getting comfortable atop the sheets before reaching for her food.

"Is this the one with the diamond?" she wondered aloud as the FBI warning began to play. "You know, isn't there some Brad Pitt movie where there's a diamond, and everyone beats everyone up for it or something? Is this that one? I can never keep them straight."

"That's _Snatch_," Jason said, barely able to believe that he actually remembered a movie he'd seen about eight years prior and hadn't felt strongly about one way or the other. "It's different."

Elizabeth unwrapped her sandwich, her eyes glued to the screen, and skipped over the previews. She only set the remote down when the opening credits began to play. "Can you pass me the mustard? There should be a couple packets in the bag. Way at the bottom, yeah, in there."

She looked around the room as Jason rummaged through the paper sack. "It's so warm in here."

"It's fine," he replied tersely, still unable to find the damn things. At this rate, he'd have to climb into the bag. He felt her shift and hop around on the mattress next to him and winced when the movements lightly jostled his injured leg. Still, the pain was entirely bearable, and he was distracted by the fact that he caught a glimpse of yellow under an inch tall stack of napkins.

"It is _not _fine," the brunette huffed as Jason snatched the desired condiment and turned toward her. "Why don't you ask Sonny to turn on the air conditioning?"

He was just about to reply that he liked fresh air and here was her mustard when he realized what all that shifting and wiggling a few seconds ago was about. Citing the heat, Elizabeth had pulled off her gold lace sweater wrap and pitched it onto the lounge chair by the windows and now sat very close to him dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a tight olive green tank top.

And she didn't even realize what affect it was having on him.

"Did you get that mustard yet?"

Jason blinked and then stared at him palm, abruptly sticking his hand out. "Here."

He pursed his lips and watched her chest expand as the brunette took a deep breath and let out a sigh, then set about adding the condiment to her sandwich. Jesus Christ. That ribbed tank showed off everything he had often skimmed his hands over, and now that familiar urge was returning.

His injury had occupied most of his attention these past few days, to be sure. And thanks to Sonny and Elizabeth, the rest of his awareness had been zapped by the aspirin they kept slipping him. But now, as he sat next to her enjoying his lunch and the view, the pain dull and far away thanks to medication that he'd made a valiant attempt to resist, Jason found that his previous desires returned and were just as strong as ever.

As it was, he couldn't move his injured leg very much. It hurt when he bent it, like he had when he changed his bandages earlier. But still, there had to be a way…

"Hey. You don't _really _wanna watch this, do you?"

She turned wide, curious eyes on him. "Huh? What do you mean?"

Jason let out a controlled breath through his nose, trying to keep his tone pleasant in order to not give away his latent frustration with the situation. "I mean, you don't really want to watch this, right?"

Elizabeth blinked at him. "Sure, I do. I've never seen it, and Johnny said you liked it. I'd kinda like to see what it's all about. Plus, Bradley Pitt's in it, and he's scruffy. I'm a fan of scruffy."

Jason realized that he should not have felt quite so pleased that he himself hadn't shaved in about three days and was sporting some serious scruff as well. "You sure?"

She eyed him suspiciously. "Why? What do _you _want to do?"

A slow, hot smile spread across his lips as Jason reached for the remote, wholly intending to turn the television off. "Take a guess."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and smacked his hand before he could flip the movie off. "Jason, you can't. Your leg."

"I can't," he agreed in a low, husky growl that he was sure would turn her his way. "But _you _can."

Oh, that never failed with women. The liquid voice, hot as fire, the smoldering eyes and the rakish little grin – it never failed. And it was an expression that he'd had occasion and opportunity to perfect over the years.

Elizabeth's cheeks bloomed with color, her skin now tinted a pearly pink, even as she made a valiant effort to study him carefully. And just when he thought he had her, the little brunette shook her head and faced the television once more, her little noise up in the air.

"Sorry, no. I'm not really into that."

She did her best to maintain her composure and not give away a little smirk that threatened to slip when he stared at her profile in shock. It was rather sweet, actually, the bewildered confusion written all across his face.

And the gesture itself was sweet as well. While Jason certainly wasn't a selfish lover, he never made it all about her. And to be honest, she preferred it that way. She wasn't enticed by his proposition because it was exactly the opposite of what made sex with Jason so enjoyable for her.

He was different from Nikolas in many ways. She hadn't anticipated how different, really: she'd always thought that one man was as good as another, provided both men in question were decent enough. Like the guards – she loved them all just the same because they were kind and fun and they genuinely cared for her. She assumed that it would be the same concerning Jason and Nikolas.

But sex with Nikolas had been much different. When they were together, he made her laugh. Sex with Jason was different: when they were together, he made her swear. He coaxed dirty word after dirty word from her mouth with all of his kisses and his touches and his nibbles. Nikolas, forever the refined prince with polished tastes, was much gentler than Jason was. She had no idea how he was with his other women, but he had always exercised care with her.

Jason, on the other hand, made it seem as if he couldn't care less. She knew that wasn't the truth: he'd always let her know with little gestures, like rolling to the side afterwards instead of crushing her under his weight, that he didn't want to hurt her. But when they were together, Jason was gruff and rough and demanding and exhausting. He took what he wanted, and almost always found a way to have her give him more. He snarled in her ear, he squeezed and stroked her hard, and he encouraged the same rough-housing from her.

And she wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

With Nikolas, she thought she had understood what people meant when they spoke of making love. Though she didn't love him, the way he took her to bed made Elizabeth believe that she might one day be able to.

With Jason, such beguiling delusions were happily dissipated. There was no concept of making love – there was only sweaty, gritty sex. The low, rusty timbre of his voice, the red crescents she left on his back, her silky hair brushing his lips, the musky scent of two bodies rolling together – that was what bedding Jason Morgan was all about. They challenged each other to new heights and discoveries, and after that, what was the fun of going it alone?

Jason was grumbling something obscene under his breath, no doubt not sharing her opinion. He looked so cute, sitting there mumbling like a sullen three-year old, and Elizabeth couldn't quite contain her smile.

"You're so easy to mess with."

He looked up with a start and stared at her for a moment before understanding, and his lips settled into a thin line. With a grunt, he hunkered down in the pillows and tore a big bite out of his sandwich.

Elizabeth's shoulders shook with gentle laughter as she licked mustard off her pinky finger. A discreet glance to her side told her that Jason was dourly staring at the screen, and after a long moment of quiet fidgeting, she nudged him with his shoulder.

"Hey."

He arched a brow at her as only he could.

"Am I doing this right?"

Her question was concerned and just a little shy, something Jason hadn't expected. "What?"

Elizabeth shrugged helplessly. "Am I doing this right? I've never kept anyone company when they were hurt before. Sonny never wants me around if he's injured, and the guys just want me to drop off food and movies and get out. They'll let me change their bandages if they have to, but you can tell they don't like it."

She shrugged again. "Plus…I'm not really good at this whole thing. Compassion, I guess. Sympathy. After the accident, Sonny and Lainey decided I needed fish or gerbils to…I don't know, encourage a nurturing side. But my gerbils got away and the fish all started dying until Sonny took them and gave them to Francis, and now they're all six inches long and still alive. And then they gave me plants to take care of and, I don't know, I water them every day but I don't feel very nurturing about it."

Her fingers fiddled with the wrapping around her sandwich and Jason's eyes softened as he watched her.

"I know I come off cold sometimes. It's not intentional, and it's something I work on. It's just hard for me to empathize with anyone – I just can't do it. I make an effort, but I never know if I'm doing it right, if I'm still coming off as too frigid or indifferent…"

The corner of his mouth lifted at her rambling, and when he nudged her back with his shoulder to get her attention, his voice was gravely and warm.

"You do just fine."

* * *

"Amazing the difference about five days makes, huh?"

Jason smirked and sat up straighter as Patrick inspected his wound, which was healing very, very nicely. "Yeah, it feels great compared to that night."

The doctor laughed and sat back. "Yeah, I can imagine. You were _wrecked_. Ever gotten hurt this bad before?"

He nodded solemnly. "Caught two bullets in the side once, thought I was gonna die."

"How long did it take you to get over that one?"

"About a month, and then it hurt every time it rained for a few months."

Patrick nodded sagely as Jason wiggled his toes in the carpet. "I bet you didn't have anyone taking care of you then like you do now."

The enforcer smirked and ran a hand through his hair, sliding his legs back up onto the bed as the doctor began to pack his supplies up. "Yeah. Makes it a lot easier. And nicer."

He paused and shook his head. "Except for the routine druggings."

That got Patrick's attention. "Druggings?"

Jason answered with a rueful roll of his eyes. "Elizabeth and Sonny. They like to grind aspirin into my food."

He broke out into an easy grin. "I hate to condone these druggings, as you call them, but it sounds like they really helped. From what I hear from Elizabeth, you've been eating well, you've been drinking plenty of fluids, and thanks to the medication you've been getting plenty of rest and you're even able to move around on it now."

Jason nodded. He could make it to the bathroom and back by limping, and he had even ventured into the kitchen this morning to get some breakfast before Sonny and Elizabeth chased him back into his room.

"Yeah, Elizabeth's been great."

Patrick nodded. "Good kid."

The enforcer scratched his cheek, absently missing the stubble that had gathered there over this past week before he'd shaved it all off this morning. "How long have you known her?"

"I moved to town about four or five years ago," the doctor explained. "You probably know my dad – Doctor Noah Drake, neurosurgeon? Anyway, he was the one that treated Elizabeth when she lost her memory, apparently. When I got to town, I was working at GH and having a hell of a time with my dad riding my ass all the time."

He shook his head, exasperated by the mere memory, and Jason realized that Patrick's issues with his family might not be too different than his own. "I was considering going into private practice, actually, just to get out of that situation. I was finishing up a shift at the free clinic and headed on up to the locker room on the fifth floor to change and get out of there before my dad caught me when Sonny stepped off the elevator with Elizabeth in his arms."

Jason brows jumped and he stilled instantly, listening as Patrick explained.

"She was having really bad headaches, he said, and she had fainted and they couldn't get her to wake up. So I admitted her and called my dad in for a consult. She needed surgery and we freed up a slot and made it happen. My dad hates Sonny so as soon as we were done he left. I stayed and talked to him and told him what we did and what we prescribed for her and what he had to do to take care of her during her recovery.

"Sonny ended up offering me a job as the mob doctor, I guess you can call it. I've worked for him ever since, and when I'm not here I'm usually at the free clinic. That's the one place in General Hospital where my dad never sets foot."

Patrick stood and zipped his bag up, tipping his head proudly at Jason. "We hardly cross paths anymore, and it's what works best for us. He hates that I work for you and Sonny, but it suits me just fine. I get along with your men, and Elizabeth's always been really nice. I don't see her very much – Sonny doesn't like her to be around if he's injured."

Jason nodded and glanced at the door as Sonny walked in. "Yeah, I've heard."

Sonny shuffled over, his hands in his pockets and his sleeves rolled up to the elbow. "Well? How's he doing?"

"Very well," the doctor replied, talking more to Jason than Sonny now. "Continue to take it easy, and get plenty of rest. You'll be back on your feet in no time."

As if to corroborate the report, Jason climbed to his feet and extended his hand. "Thanks for everything, Patrick."

"It's my pleasure," the young man replied sincerely. "Besides, not treating you guys well would be very bad for my business – I need you alive and in _extremely _good health and spirit to cut those checks."

He winked and clapped Sonny on the shoulder, then tipped his head toward the door. "I'll see myself out. Give Elizabeth and Alexis my regards."

Sonny waited until Patrick had left the room. "Good guy."

Jason stretched his leg, first the good one, then the injured one. "You heard from Spinelli at all?"

His friend shook his head. "We saw him yesterday at lunch, but he was in and out of here so fast I couldn't get a word out of him. I think he's at the warehouse. You want me to drag him over here?"

Jason waved a hand in the air and gingerly hopped back onto the rumpled bed. "No, it's fine, leave him."

Sonny dipped his head. "All right. Listen, I've got to touch base with Benny and Bernie, and I'm leaving in about twenty minutes. You want anything?"

He shook his head and reached for the morning paper. "No, I'm fine. Go."

But in truth, he wasn't fine. And he knew that Sonny was preoccupied – and most likely still worried – because he left the room without seeing through that half-lie. In all truth, Jason was bored.

Very, very bored.

He'd gotten hurt plenty of times before, but it was almost always while on the run. And while on the run, one didn't have the luxury of lounging around in bed drinking orange juice and watching old action flicks. When he got hurt before, he tried like hell to get away from those chasing him and lay low until the coast was clear. Every second counted in the fight for his life, and with all that going on he rarely had time to dwell on the pain or inconvenience of a bullet wound.

But as it was, he was a guest in Sonny's house having all his meals cooked for him as he dozed off all day. It wasn't what he wanted to do, of course, but there was very little else to do. He'd already gone over all the ledgers from the warehouse and coffee shop, he'd looked over all the schedules, he'd done everything he could reasonably do until the guards and Sonny and Benny and Bernie were biting their tongues to keep from begging him to just piss off.

He wasn't used to the luxury of boredom.

Thankfully, just as he was about to hunker down among the fluffed pillows and read the morning paper for the second time since that morning, Elizabeth waltzed in with a bulging tote bag and rescued him.

"You are going to love me."

Jason didn't even look up from the Sports section. "That's against our rules."

He didn't have to see her face to know that she was rolling her eyes. "I mean, you are going to love me once you see what I brought you."

That got his attention and Jason eyed the tote bag suspiciously, all thoughts of the lineup forgotten. "What?"

She threw out a sweater, a stack of papers, and a few CDs that she'd use to disguise the true contents of the bag and proudly held up two bottles of beer and a large bag of barbequed potato chips. "Ta-da."

He broke out in an easy grin as she hopped up on the bed and scooted closer, offering him both bottles so he could open them while she ripped open the bag of chips. "How'd you get this in past Sonny?"

"I'm sneaky," she winked, setting the bag of chips down between them and accepting her beer. "Cheers. Here's to your recovery."

He clinked his bottle with hers and took a big gulp, watching her out of the corner of his eye. He didn't even want to think about how much he liked it when she just came and sat in bed next to him, because thinking about it would mean having to acknowledge that it was true, and Jason wasn't too keen on doing that.

"You look happy today."

He almost didn't want to say it, because that would mean that he'd been paying attention and noticing how her skin glowed and her eyes danced happily around the room and how her toes moved to some unheard beat. And Jason didn't think it was at all prudent to admit to noticing those things. But the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.

Elizabeth shrugged and tilted her head, thankfully not realizing the thought process behind the question. "Yeah, it's a good day. I haven't seen the nerd in a few days – I think that's what it is."

He knew she was just saying that to needle him, and he let it go. "Yeah, he's…out somewhere."

Elizabeth murmured something and reached over to the nightstand, straightening the small pile of books she'd taken out of her tote before they crashed to the floor. Her one-handed flailing caught Jason's attention and he looked past her. "What are those?"

"A couple of books that Dr. Jackson recommended," Elizabeth replied, giving up and just grabbing the whole pile so he could peruse the titles. "The first one – _Absurdistan_. It's supposed to be really funny. This one's just a collection of literary essays."

"And this one?" Jason asked, pulling out a thick paperback from the back.

Elizabeth smiled. "That's a library book I picked up the other day. An architectural guidebook to Italy."

He flipped it open to the middle and began thumbing through the glossy photos. "This one's not as nice as the pictures make you think – it's small and cramped. This one – this one is _much _nicer than the pictures make you think."

She scooted closer to him and rested her chin on his shoulder so that she could follow along. "What's that?"

"A cathedral in Orvieto. You should hear the organ music once you step inside. It has the best echo."

"And that?"

"The scenic gardens by Stressa."

Her already dazzling eyes lit up, if that was at all possible. "Stressa? That's where they are in _A Farewell to Arms_!"

It wasn't the first connection he would have made, but it didn't surprise him. "Yeah. Here's the Duomo in Milan. Spinelli has a picture of me standing outside it, right by that huge gate."

Elizabeth gazed at him in wonder. "You posed for a picture?"

Jason shook his head in disgust. "God, no. He told me he had to go to the bathroom and to wait for him there, and he snuck off behind a crowd of people and snapped the shot."

She laughed and rested her cheek in his arm. "Yeah, I figured it would have to be something like that."

"He got a shot of us in Tuscany, too," Jason mused, tilting his head back as he remembered his adventures in Italy with his little sidekick. "He plied me with liquor in Siena and got one of the locals to snap a picture of us in the town square by some guy playing an accordion. I have the stupidest smile on my face. I told him to get rid of it, and then I tried to steal his flash drive, but he'd already hosted it online."

She laughed and took another pull from her bottle. "Oh, I have to get him to show me that one."

Jason grunted and flipped through the rest of the book, content with the weight of her head on his arm. "He knows he's a dead man if he does. Oh, we were here, too. Yeah, I remember this place: it's a walled town. Spinelli dragged me through it."

"Sounds like you guys had fun there."

Jason nodded, and the oddest, smallest little smile played upon his lips. "Yeah, we did. Good food, good wine…"

"Good company," Elizabeth teased, elbowing him gently in the ribs.

He cracked a rare grin and dipped his head. "Yeah, that, too. If we hadn't spent so much time wandering through the area, I probably wouldn't have let Spinelli come with me. I would have left him with one of my associates in the area, asked him to look out for him, and left it at that."

"And now look at you two," she said, puffing out her chest. "Bosom buddies til the end."

Jason glanced down at her and instead of replying, plucked her bottle from her hand. "I don't think you need that anymore."

She snatched it back from him and once she was convinced he wouldn't try to take it from her again, settled down against him once more. "You know what I want to do?"

"What?"

"A walking tour of Tuscany. That would be so incredible."

"It's a great area," Jason agreed. "Lots of small towns, some where they don't have streetlights or cars or anything."

"I'd never get Sonny to go," she chuckled. "He'd want to find a five-star hotel and sit there for two weeks."

"Yeah, that sounds like him," Jason laughed before sobering up. "But you really should go. Everyone who has the chance should see Italy. Hell, see the world."

"But especially Italy, right?"

He grinned when she winked. "Especially Italy."

"I wouldn't even know where to start," she said honestly. "I've seen all the main attractions, so to speak, and gone on all the tours and cruises. But seeing it on my own…I wouldn't know where to begin."

"It's just a matter of looking around for the things everyone else walks right past," Jason told her. Something in his voice made her think that he knew what he was talking about. "You're talking about Tuscany – most tourists only go there for the wine and the villas. But if you walk around and you speak the language and you get to know the locals, you'll find things you never would have believed. It's just about having the right person with you to show you around."

When he looked down at her, his eyes were warmer and more intense. "You should see Italy. The right way."

His tone had changed, and Elizabeth knew she had to change it back, made it lighter. "Well, would you know anyone willing to show me around – the right way?"

Oh, crap. That was exactly the _opposite _of what she should have said, especially if she went by the way his eyes glowed.

Jason's lips curled into a little smirk and he resumed thumbing through the book. "I might, if the timing's right."

And he left it at that.

Which was a pity, because Elizabeth was slowly realizing that she'd have liked to hear more.

* * *

"Hey – I hear Sonny coming! Quick! Hide the beer!"

Jason immediately gulped down the last of his beer when she said that and shoved his bottle under the sheets as she did the same. The bag of chips they immediately crammed behind the pillows and tried to hold still so it couldn't be heard crinkling.

Sonny would kill them if he found his patient drinking beer and eating potato chips.

And in his home, no less.

"Hey, you two," the mobster greeted them as he poked his head into the room. "Listen, I'm back from the warehouse and I thought we could all make dinner together. Jason, you wanna come sit in the kitchen while Elizabeth and I get things started?"

The enforcer and the brunette exchanged glances. "Uh, sure. Yeah, that sounds fine."

"Good," Sonny replied, looking pleased. "And while you're at it, give Spinelli a ring. See where he's at and tell him to come home and eat. I haven't seen that boy all day."

"You rang, Mister Corinthos Sir?"

Damien Spinelli, looking positively giddy as he careened down the hall and into the room, narrowly avoided clipping his hopeful employer in the shoulder. "The Jackal is most assuredly present!"

"Good," the mobster groused, settling a hand between his shoulder blades and seeking to steer him out of the room. "We're going to get dinner started, and I need you to chop up some vegetables for me."

"Hey, Boss, we found Spaghetti," Johnny announced as he, Max and Ritchie stepped into the room. "Oh. So did you."

"And so did I," the boy announced proudly as all eyes refocused on him. "Well, I didn't find myself, really, but I did find something that will be of immediate importance to everyone in this room."

"I'm sure it can wait until after dinner-"

"Mister Corinthos Sir, you will pardon the Jackal for disagreeing, but in this case, he knows he's right." Spinelli set down his computer case and planted his hands on his hips, too excited to pay attention to the fact that his beloved mentor and his arch-nemesis were lounging around in bed together.

"Our friend Paolo, Don Tagliati's loyal enforcer, is indeed the man we're after," he declared. "He's been making a play for your territories. Don Tagliati knows nothing about it."

Sonny arched a brow. "Are you positive?"

Spinelli nodded. "Absolutely. Don Tagliati has no idea that his enforcer has turned on him. Paolo wants to strike out on his own, and he thinks that if he gets your territory, he'll be powerful enough to boot out Tagliati…and Don Salvatore."

Jason squinted at the boy. "Don Salvatore's in danger?"

"Of his own stupidity," he smirked. "Don Salvatore is the one in cahoots with the Evil Enforcer. He's helping Paolo strike out, but he doesn't realize that once he does, his own ass is toast."

"What else have you found out?"

Spinelli puffed his chest out proudly. "The last piece of the puzzle. When Stone Cold was out trying to carry out the hit, Don Salvatore and the Evil Enforcer were meeting. But there was a third party present that night."

Jason nodded. "There were several men in the room that I've never seen before."

"They work for someone by the name of Lorenzo Alcazar," Spinelli confirmed, his eyes darting back and forth between Sonny and Jason when they both adopted grim expressions. "He's an arms dealer from Venezuela with ties to the United States federal government. And it looks like he's the real player in this game. From what I got on him, he's trying to pit everyone against everyone else and then swoop in when you're all at your most vulnerable. He was the one who spotted someone in the tree, and he was the one who sent his men after you, Stone Cold."

Sonny's lips settled into a tight red line. "Son of a bitch, I've gotta get on this. Good work, Spinelli. You really came through."

"It was no trouble, Mister Corinthos Sir. The Jackal is only too happy to help."

Jason, too, looked at Spinelli, pleased. "Good job. You did it."

The boy grinned. "Thanks, Stone Cold. You're looking a little peeved there, Dragon. Something wrong?"

Oh, shit.

Jason glanced to his side at Elizabeth, whom he had very nearly forgotten about, and found the little brunette positively _livid_. The three guards had noticed the same thing and were now trying to inconspicuously inch toward the door.

"So all this time," she began, her voice dangerously controlled as she scooted off the bed and stood right between Spinelli and Jason, "you were working on this?"

The boy smirked. "Yup."

"And you," she bit out, turning to Jason. "You knew about it."

Despite himself, he gulped. "Yeah."

Her hands curled into fists, and they could see that she was visibly shaking with rage. Inside, however, Elizabeth was kicking herself for being to involved with Jason's injuries and his needs that she didn't once notice what was really going on.

Ever the mediator, Sonny tried to step in. "Sweetheart-"

"And so all this time, while I changed your bandages and helped you get up and brought you food and movies and slept at the foot of your damn bed, you were just snowing me over?"

Her eyes blazed and Elizabeth fixed Jason with her most ferocious glare. "You were completely playing me."

"No, I wasn't," he protested, knowing it was only a half-truth. "I liked that you were taking care of me."

"And all so your darling little protégé could get the goods!" Elizabeth shrieked, more upset with herself now for being so blind. "And I must have been the perfect unsuspecting little pawn, too – I never once thought it was suspicious that the nerd was off doing God knows what while I was taking your temperature and trying to get it to go down."

She whirled on Spinelli as the three guards shot Jason dirty looks. "Remember this, you little nerd, if you had to cheat like this to get ahead, it says a lot about your crap skills. And as for you…"

Elizabeth glared at Jason, her hands planted on her hips. "I certainly know better now. All those times you complained about being bored, and your protests and your tantrums and your stupid talk about taking me to Italy – you're on notice!"

"He was going to take her to Italy?" Johnny smirked, unable to help himself. "Wow."

"Shut your damn mouth, O'Brien."

"I don't think you're allowed to talk, Boss," Ritchie laughed. "You're on notice, after all."

"And as for you…"

Spinelli cringed when Elizabeth advanced on him and closed his eyes tightly, waiting for the blow. He remained like that for a good ten seconds, and only when he was fairly sure that she wasn't going to pummel him for his underhandedness did the boy crack open his eyes.

Elizabeth was standing in front of him, her index finger an inch from his nose, her hands shaking. Finally, she dropped her hand and glared at him. "I've got nothing," she admitted flatly as she pushed past him. "Good job."

Spinelli's mouth fell open as he gaped at Jason and Sonny, not fully able to believe his luck. With the Dragon in such a fiery rage, he was certain that he was in for it.

Jason, too, had the same feeling but that didn't mean he wasn't above calling out to her. "Elizabeth, wait-"

The brunette poked her head back into the room, but instead of acknowledging him looked straight at Sonny. "Also, Jason's drinking beer and eating chips. I told him to stop but he called me a dumb girl and did it anyway."

Sonny turned a menacing glare on his best friend as Elizabeth backed out the door, wiggling her eyebrows at the enforcer to let him know that they were well on their way to being even.


	25. Chapter 25

Previous – Jason recovers; Spinelli figures out the greater extent of the mob threat; Elizabeth gets mad at Jason for playing on her sympathies.

**Note – **Thank you to all the nice people here and at SE who reply. :) It's nice.

Hack | 25

Spinelli had asked him a million times what it was that he was looking for after Jason had hobbled back to his own penthouse and taken up residence in the master bedroom once more. But instead of getting some rest like Patrick told him to, the enforcer began to slowly and methodically tear the room apart as he searched for some unknown item.

Spinelli had wanted to help; hell, he'd tried to help, but his mentor refused to tell him just what it was he was looking for. He went through his night stand, he dumped the contents of his dresser onto the floor before neatly stowing them away again, and he went through his closets and the duffel bags that he and Spinelli used while on the run. And when he finally found it, instead of coming out into the room and showing his young friend the cause for their troubles, he merely hid the item in his palm, shoved Spinelli out into the hall, changed from his pajama bottoms into a pair of worn jeans and a t-shirt, and hobbled back across the hall.

Elizabeth had cleared out of Sonny's penthouse by now, of course, and headed back to her own. The door was slightly ajar as Jason made a beeline for it, having to brace a hand against the wall to steady himself. The unusual exertion after about a week of doing nothing but lounging in bed was not good for his leg, but he felt he needed to take care of this sooner rather than later.

Yeah, sooner was good.

Especially since 'later' carried with it the promise of certain retaliation on Elizabeth's part.

…Yeah, sooner was definitely better.

But as he neared her door, fully prepared to bite the bullet and say something he never intended to tell her – boy, he'd have to tamper it down so that it didn't come out sappy – he realized that she had company.

"So what are you going to do to Jason for being an ass?"

It was Ritchie's voice. He should have known it. Ritchie was always a pain in the ass when it came to Elizabeth. He'd heard rumors among the newer guards that when Elizabeth was a little younger, she had a huge crush on Ritchie, who'd found out about it but hadn't exactly reciprocated, and the incident had become a great ice breaker between them.

Goddamn Ritchie.

He could make out her reply, which told him that she was hovering somewhere by the balcony doors as her friends lounged on the couch.

"I'm not going to do anything."

Jason blinked. Surely, he hadn't heard that right.

Apparently, the guards thought the same thing.

"What?" Johnny asked incredulously. "Come on, Default, you've gotta be shitting us, right? You've always got a counter strike ready should the occasion present itself."

"As it usually does," Ritchie tossed in for good measure.

"You guys make me sound like a plotting, manipulative shrew."

A long pause.

And then, "Oh, I'm sorry, we haven't been introduced. I'm Ritchie San Marco, and this is Johnny O'Brien, and-"

"Yeah, yeah."

"No, seriously, what are you going to do to him? We wanna know."

"Yeah, we haven't seen the Boss Man tied up in knots like this since…ever."

Jason bristled, and he could hear Elizabeth let out a little laugh. "You guys get way too much pleasure out of watching him squirm."

"It's _fun_."

"You're awful."

"Hey, hey," Ritchie protested, "we're awful? Sounds like you're forgetting who gets stuck trying to distract Spaghetti when he wants to drop by your penthouse while your gentleman caller is here."

"Yeah," Johnny agreed. "And that kid's like a dog with a bone. I once had to shove him back into the penthouse and hold the doorknob because he kept insisting that he had to see you and wouldn't shut up about it. I believe this was the same day that Max walked in on you and Jason going at it on the dining table. Poor guy had nightmares for a week."

Jason, who hadn't known that the guards were running interference like that, could almost see Elizabeth rolling her eyes before she reluctantly replied, "Well, thanks, I guess I do owe you there."

"And we know the perfect way you can pay us back – tell us what crap you've got planned for the Boss Man."

He waited for one of those sardonic little chuckles that the brunette had perfected, but Jason only heard a beleaguered sigh. "Guys, I'm not going to do anything to him."

"What?!"

"Oh, come on," Ritchie protested. "You made such a great promise of retaliation; it seems almost cruel not to follow through. I was really looking forward to it."

"Hell, I was just shocked that you didn't tackle Spaghetti," Johnny admitted. "I was expecting you to just _whale_ on the kid. Would have been funny. I've been shuffling papers at the warehouse all day – I could have used a little show."

She could be heard to sigh wearily. "What good would it have done, tackling Spinelli? Not that I didn't want to. I just didn't have a good reason to."

"Sure you did! The little sneak-"

"The little sneak helped Sonny and Jason out," Elizabeth cut in. "I was too caught up with Jason's leg – I thought that was the most important thing to deal with at the time. Spinelli, he went out and he got the information. He found out who was trying to hurt Jason. And whether I like it or not, that was exactly what had to be done."

"But-"

"But, nothing. Spinelli did exactly what had to be done. Because the only thing that matters here is keeping Jason from getting hurt. Spinelli found out who had spotted him and now Sonny can deal with it and eliminate the threat. Alcazar or Paolo or Don Salvatore will not have the chance to come after him again and finish the job."

"…That's really mature of you, you know."

"Yeah, yeah."

"…Who the fuck are you and where's our Elizabeth?"

There was a muffled sound, as if someone had been hit in the face with one of Elizabeth's colorful little throw pillows.

"So you're really not going to do anything to Jason?"

"'Fraid not, John-Boy."

"Damn."

"Although, I've been thinking…"

"What?"

Jason could practically see Ritchie pounce on that wistful little statement.

"What have you been thinking? Is it diabolical? Because I'm totally on board with diabolical."

"I don't know, I've been thinking that…" She let out a little huff, as if she were blowing her bangs out of her face. Jason leaned heavily against the wall, trying to make out her words.

"Maybe the little nerd's the better man for the job."

Jason's eyes bulged at the unexpected declaration, soft and unsure as it was, and Johnny and Ritchie were equally surprised.

"What?! Okay, now I _know_ you're shitting me."

"You've gotta be kidding, Elizabeth!"

"I'm serious," she informed them quietly. "Think about it. He's beating me in the challenges by three, and I'm already behind on the current challenge because I've been wasting my time taking care of Jason. Spinelli already has it done because he wasn't the one worrying about getting someone's fever to go down, or keeping someone entertained and happy."

Jason cringed and scrubbed a hand over his mouth. Fuck.

"Plus, he uncovered the whole mess with Alcazar – you could tell that Sonny was really impressed. And on top of all that, he's…not a girl."

"And just what the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"Yeah, one of the things I like best about you is that you're a girl!"

Okay, that settled it, Ritchie was going to have to go.

"Look, all I'm saying is that he's a guy, and he's so much better at compartmentalizing than I am. When Jason got sick, he stayed in the beginning and helped him get settled in, then immediately got out of the way and went to work. And what did I do? God, I hovered. I _smothered_ that man. Ugh, I think about it now and I just want to kick myself! I can't believe I did all that – what was I thinking?"

Funny, he'd enjoyed all that she did for him. Appreciated it more than he was willing to say.

"I don't know, maybe Spinelli's right. Maybe this is why most organizations don't have girls in high positions. Look at how I acted with Jason – how embarrassing." He could hear her shudder. "Shoot me if I ever do that again."

"Agreed," the guards answered in unison, damn them.

"But what does this have to do with anything?" Ritchie wanted to know. "So Spaghetti's winning temporarily – so what?"

"Well, I've just been thinking…why not let him have the job? Why don't I just back off and let him take over?"

"…Are you insane?!"

"You're not serious, Elizabeth."

"Why not?" she asked impatiently, and Jason could just see her plant her hands on her hips like she always did when she was exasperated. "He wants the job so damn much – he's got such a hard-on for impressing Sonny and Jason – why not let him have it? There's so much more than I could be doing. I'm still a young woman-"

"-A very young, stupid woman."

"When I need an editorial, I'll ask for one, San Marco."

"Sorry."

"Anyway, I'm still a young woman. I haven't done so many things yet. I could be out seeing the world, getting into trouble, falling in love-"

"You don't believe in love," Ritchie cut in as Jason bristled outside. Elizabeth ignored him completely.

"Hell, I could go on my walking tour of Italy, and I could drive all the way to the West Coast, and I could drink espresso by the French Riviera and catch the Northern Lights and go whale-watching and-"

"We get the point, Default. And don't think I didn't recognize last week's lineup of the Discovery channel."

He could almost hear the air sizzle as Elizabeth undoubtedly skewered the Irishman with a ferocious glare. "Anyway, I could be out doing any one or all of those things. Instead, what am I doing? I'm sitting around in an empty penthouse, sparring with a stupid little nerd and his hulking, surly, Neanderthal of a mentor. Those two are both _such_ a waste of my time."

"No argument from the peanut gallery."

"It's just that…I don't know, maybe I'd be happier if I were away. I mean, sure, I'd miss Sonny and Nikolas and all of you guys like crazy. You've been my family since I moved in here six years ago. But ever since Jason and Spinelli came to town…I don't know, things have been so different. And I don't think I like it."

Something twisted inside Jason's chest, and he rested the back of his head against the wall. Inside, Johnny was similarly struggling with these thoughts.

"But if you leave, if you run away, it's like you're admitting defeat and letting Spaghetti and Jason win."

Elizabeth sighed with the weight of the world on her shoulders. "Maybe I just don't care about that anymore. Maybe it's just…gotten beyond my control now."

A soft sigh and then quietly, "You know, sometimes I wish I had a girl friend."

Jason closed his eyes and winced. Oh, fuck.

He was a total ass.

"Someone who was like me," Elizabeth continued hesitantly. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you guys don't really know what it's like to be a girl."

"Yeah, unfortunately, we can't exactly add that to our resumes."

She ignored them. "I mean, I look around town at girls like Lulu and Gia and Maxie – girls I can't _stand_ because they're just so horrible to me – and I sometimes think, I wonder what it would be like to have someone like that in my life. Someone nice, though. Someone that I could talk to without having to pretend that I was tougher than I actually am."

"…You pretend like that around us?"

A helpless sigh. "Yeah, sometimes, I guess. What else can I do? You're all guys, and you're all several years older than me, and you've all actually killed people with your bare hands. And sometimes the things you say…"

Jason could hear one of the men get up from the couch. "Elizabeth, have we ever made you uncomfortable with our jokes? Because you know we're just kidding, right? Anything we say that's even remotely chauvinistic – we're just kidding, I swear."

Silence.

"Shit. Come on, honey, you have to know we're joking. You're like one of the guys to us."

"Shut up, retard, I don't think that's what she wanted to hear," Johnny hissed, and he could be heard giving his friend a smack upside the back of the head. "Elizabeth, we all know that you're a girl. And if we make you feel sometimes with our jokes or our insults that you're somehow less because you're a girl, then we're really sorry. Because trust me, kid, none of us feel that way."

Jason closed his eyes and let out a sigh that came out half-growl. That was exactly what he and Spinelli did, but unlike Johnny and Ritchie, they didn't have the good sense to be honest with Elizabeth and tell her that they were sorry if they hurt her.

"I know, I know," the brunette replied, sounding suspiciously like she was sniffing. "And I love hanging out with you guys, I really do. And I hate sounding ungrateful. It's just that…sometimes, I just can't help wishing that I had a girl around here that I could talk to, someone that knew what I was going through and shared my interests and just…"

She sighed and shook her head. "Never mind. It's not important."

Except, of course, that Jason thought it was.

A long silence stretched out, until Johnny finally broke it. "So are you serious about leaving us?"

God, Jason hoped not. When he had first come to town, Elizabeth had seemed completely out of place and extraneous to their organization, and he'd remember back to a quieter, simpler time when it was just him and Sonny and the guys. Now, amazingly enough, he thought that things would be rather boring without the spirited brunette around to shake them up and keep them all on their toes. And if she left, that meant that Spinelli would be able to devote one-hundred percent of his time to bugging him…

Crap.

She had to stay.

"I don't know. I guess I'm going to have to think about it. I don't want to do anything rash just because I'm…depressed about how things turned out this afternoon."

His leg was starting to truly bother him, and Jason gritted his teeth and rubbed it, trying to ease the ache away. He'd been standing against the wall for too long and had to get back to his penthouse. Elizabeth had company and besides, he'd already realized that this was the wrong time for his visit.

So he pushed himself away from the wall and hobbled back over to Penthouse II where Spinelli was no doubt waiting for him, still hoping he might be let in on the secret of whatever it was that his mentor had torn his room apart searching for.

As soon as the penthouse door closed, the click sounding audibly in the hallway, Ritchie abandoned his seat on the couch and crept to the door of Penthouse VI. He quietly poked his head out and made sure the coast was clear before turning around with a satisfied grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"Mission accomplished, Default."

Elizabeth squealed and clapped her hands. "Awesome. Thanks for the help, guys. I think Jason got an earful, don't you?"

Johnny laughed and leaned against the back of the couch. "Did he ever. And that stuff about wanting a female friend and feeling out of place as a girl – classic. Oh, man, I would have paid good money to see the look on his face when he heard that part and realized what a jackass he was."

Ritchie tilted his head to the side and smirked. "Yup, she's a good little bull-shitter, just like her legal guardian."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and flopped down on the hutch of the sofa. "That I am, but I still meant what I said about Spinelli doing a good job."

"…You're not serious."

"And I meant the other thing I said, too," she replied firmly. "About how the only important thing here is making sure Jason is safe. And all of us, too, by extension. I meant that."


	26. Chapter 26

_Previously – Elizabeth guilts Jason with the help of Johnny and Ritchie._

**Note – **Ah, the second half. You know, for the first time in years, I'm writing a story without an outline. Eep! Scary! Children run away! Scary! (SNL fans got that.)

Hack | 26

"Where did you go, Stone Cold?"

Jason shut the door with his palm and leaned against it for a moment, catching his breath. He'd overdone it just now as far as his leg went. Spinelli reached out to help him to the couch, but Jason waved him away and managed to hobble there on his own, collapsing onto the pillows with an exhausted groan.

"Well?"

"I needed to talk to Elizabeth."

Spinelli crinkled his nose. "The Dragon? What for? Don't tell me you're actually feeling bad."

Jason bristled and crossed his arms over his chest. His friend took this as an obvious admission.

"Come on, Stone Cold, what do you have to feel bad about?"

"I – Nothing, it's just…"

Spinelli arched a brow when Jason trailed off. "Look, the way I see it, you didn't ask her to do all those things, for you? Even when I asked you to play it up for her, you didn't ask her to do all those things for you and bring you books and movies and stuff, did you?"

"No, but-"

"Then what are you so guilty about?" he asked, throwing his hands in the air. "That's the Dragon's fault: she was trying to be some type of Nurturing Nightingale when it's more than clear that she's just not capable of it-"

"Don't," Jason ground out, his blue eyes suddenly flashing, "say that about her. She does fine."

Spinelli snapped his mouth shut and stared at his employer for a good long moment until Jason actually began to shift uncomfortably.

"What?"

"What is _with_ you?" his friend wanted to know. "You've been acting really weird these past few weeks, Stone Cold, and the Jackal didn't want to say anything at first but now it's just gotten too obvious. What's wrong with you?"

"There's nothing wrong with me."

"No?" Spinelli challenged as Jason hunkered down on the couch. "Let's see, you talk to her more now than you ever did, you always find excuses to make random trips to her penthouse, you let her needle you and bait you and you don't shut her up, you let her attack _me_ and you don't do anything, you're defending her to me, you're feeling guilty when she throws a stupid girly tantrum, and then you tear your room apart looking for something that I can only imagine is for her. That's grounds for being labeled certifiably insane right there, Stone Cold."

Jason grimaced and absently patted his pocket, making sure the item was still there. "There's nothing wrong with me."

"Do you even listen to me anymore?" Spinelli demanded, hopping off the couch and glaring down at his trusted mentor. "Because it doesn't seem like you do. The Dragon has been slowly working her – her fiery wiles, Stone Cold! She's been working her fiery wiles on you and now you don't know which way you're going and you're arguing with me and our relationship is being undermined. Stone Cold! SHE'S TRYING TO BREAK UP THE BAND!"

"She's not trying to break up the band," Jason retorted. "There _is_ no band!"

"There could be a band!"

"Spinelli, there will never be a band."

Good Lord, of all the things he never thought he'd ever hear himself say…

"But I just know you'll be most talented on the metronome, and if I finish my accordion lessons-"

"No band."

The boy flopped down on the hutch of an armchair. "Fine."

"Look, I just…" Jason sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. "It's gotta be hard for her, being the only girl in this organization."

"I hate to point out the obvious, but that was her choice," Spinelli reminded him. "Mister Corinthos Sir is loaded. After she became his ward, she could have done whatever she wanted. She could have gone to an expensive boarding school. She could have gone on that tour of Italy she wouldn't shut up about. Speaking of that, did you actually tell her you'd take her? Because that's weak, Stone Cold. So did you?"

"No!" Not in any precise words, anyway.

"Okay, good, well, fine, she could have done that. She could have decided to spend all her days sleeping til noon, shopping, and partying all night. But she decided to work for Mister Corinthos Sir and for some unknown reason, he let her."

Jason rolled his eyes. "You have to admit that she's good at what she does."

Spinelli just gaped at him. "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!"

"Spinelli, I…I…fuck."

The boy eyed him quizzically. "Have you been into my stash?"

"What? No!" Jason glared at him sharply, his eyes narrowed. "You mean you still have a stash?"

"What? No!"

A stand-off. Both men glared at the other, not sure how much they could believe of what the other said. Drugs and women – even in small doses, they were enough to screw up a guy's life. Of this, Spinelli was certain.

"I was just asking because Afternoon Dee-lite has a slowing effect on…people, after all."

"I know, Spinelli."

They continued to stare at each other, certain that for the first time in a very long time, they were at a crossroads. For some reason, Stone Cold had lost his mind and was now defending the Dragon. And the Jackal, of course, remained ever steadfast in his quest for total domination of all the Corinthos-Morgan organization's technological support needs. It was a power struggle, that's what this was. They were both evenly matched, the Jackal and the Stone Cold one and neither one was willing to budge from his firmly held-

"Stop staring at me and go get me a goddamn beer."

"Right away, Stone Cold."

~*~*~*~*~*~

She had turned down a night at Jake's with the guys to stay in and finish up her work. Thanks to the extra hours she was able to put in, Elizabeth had finished her challenge, dropped it off at Sonny's (even though she had most likely already lost out because Spinelli had turned in his a full twenty-four hours earlier), did the dishes, cleaned her kitchen, and vacuumed her penthouse.

She was like Susie Homemaker over here.

Gross.

Elizabeth shuddered and kicked the vacuum into a utility closet. Enough with the June Cleaver routine. Her penthouse was now spic and span, and she could finally have some fun. If the guys were still at Jake's and still relatively sober, she could go hang out with them. But they'd most likely started tying them on about an hour or two ago and were sure to be plastered by the time she arrived anyway.

She was just about to call Johnny and check when there was a knock on her door. That was strange, because she wasn't expecting any visitors. But as long as it wasn't her stupid nerd, she was fine with the late night caller.

"Come on in."

The door opened and Jason poked his head in. He was the last person Elizabeth had been expecting – honestly, she didn't see him coming over when their argument and his deception were so fresh in both their minds – but that didn't stop her from quickly trotting to the door to help him.

"What are you doing? Are you stupid or something?"

It was the second time she'd put it to him so plainly, and Jason frowned as she pulled the door open all the way and latched onto his arm. It was getting kind of annoying, her need to hear him verbalize his own stupidity.

"You know you're not supposed to be walking around on that too much," she scolded, kicking the door shut and helping him over to the couch. "Sit. God, I can't believe how big an idiot you are. Do you _ever_ want to get better?"

"I'm fine," he replied defensively, trying to ignore the surge of something warm in his chest at the way she fussed and worried over him. He'd never quite had that before – and it didn't count when it was Sonny. And it counted even less when it was Spinelli.

"You're an idiot, is what you are," Elizabeth corrected, crossing her arms over her chest and regarding him with thinly veiled annoyance. "You want to undo the whole healing process, don't you?"

"I'm fine, really," Jason replied, unable to keep from chuckling. She was towering over him – quite a feat given her diminutive frame – and glowering as if he were a disobedient child. It had been quite a while since someone had looked at him like that. "I just…had to see you."

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed. "Are you high?"

"No!" Goddamn, why did people keep asking him that?

"Well, you know, Afternoon Dee-lite _does _have a slowing effect on-"

"…people, I know," he finished impatiently. "No, I'm not high. And I'm having a K-9 unit search Spinelli's bedroom tomorrow."

The corner of her mouth twitched, and some of the sternness melted from her eyes. "Yeah, that's probably wise."

Picking her way carefully past him, Elizabeth slowly sat down on the couch, trying not to jostle him too much. "So what did you want to see me about? Does Spinelli have some more work to do? You have a song and dance about how much your leg hurts so he can burn the midnight oil?"

His expression became peevish, and Jason shifted on the couch as he tried to retrieve something from his pocket. "Look, I'm sorry about what happened. It was kind of my fault-"

She snorted, but he chose to ignore her.

"And I feel…bad," Jason got out uneasily. He didn't exactly have a lot of experience apologizing to women. His interactions with them rarely lasted that long…and they rarely required more than a few select, often dirty words.

Elizabeth watched him through narrowed eyes, noting how hard it was for him to get that out.

Crap.

Now _she_ felt bad for snowing him over with her faux confession to the guards.

"So I got you something."

Well, there was something unexpected. Elizabeth's eyes widened and she scooted closer, noticing that he had something in his hand. This had to be one of Jason Morgan's tried and true methods of appeasing ticked off women: to buy them off, as he had once tried previously with her.

"Is it shiny and expensive?"

He smirked, recalling his words from a few weeks ago when he thought she was up to something, and shook his head. "You got the shiny part right, though."

She held out her hands and he dropped the item from his closed fist into her waiting palms, then drew back and watched her as she inspected it.

It was a solid disk, about the same size as a Kennedy silver dollar, and half an inch thick. The heat from Jason's body had warmed it, and it fairly glowed in her hand. And when Elizabeth held it up to the light of her Tiffany lamp, she was almost positive that the piece of red glass was brighter than the sun.

"Where did you get this?" she asked as she turned it over in her hands, and Jason felt ten feet tall at the quiet awe in her voice.

"Guess."

She glanced up at him, her fingers still closed around the brilliant glass. "I couldn't possibly."

He stretched an arm across the back of the couch and scratched the back of his head, admitting, "Italy."

Those dark sapphire eyes lit up, danced, and turned to him. And Jason Morgan suddenly found himself wondering just when a single pair of eyes became so damn mesmerizing that he'd do or say just about anything to keep them dazzling that way.

"You're joking."

He shook his head once. "Nope. Me and Spinelli took a boat to Murano, and they were selling glass wares. Some of it was pretty junky, all gold and spray-painted. But this…the color caught my eye immediately and I just grabbed it. I didn't know what I was going to do with it, but I wanted it anyway."

Elizabeth smiled at the glass and turned it over in her hand. She had a feeling that such impulse purchases were extremely rare for her enforcer friend. "It's pretty."

"Yeah, I thought so."

She held it up to the light once more and watched the crimson reflection dance on the wall. "It would look real nice as a necklace. Or maybe a pair of earrings."

Leave it to Elizabeth to think of something like that. Jason tugged on his ear and smirked. All these years, he'd been walking around with an impractical hunk of glass in his pocket. As soon as she got her hands on it, the little brunette was already imagining a million uses for it.

"Yeah, sure."

"Ooh, maybe an amulet," she sighed, settling back on the cushions and gazing at it in wonder. "Something in blackened silver, really old-style and classic. It would look so pretty."

She pressed it between her palms as if to make sure it stayed with her, then looked up at Jason with the smallest, warmest of grins. "Thank you. I love it."

"It's yours," he affirmed with a tiny nod. "I'm glad you like it."

Elizabeth sighed happily and went back to inspecting her present. Jason watched her quietly as she noted every detail, wondering how any person could be so interested in a simple piece of glass. It was as if he'd handed her one of those ridiculous looking golden decorated six-inch tall eggs or something.

She was still studying it happily when she felt his fingers tickle the back of her neck.

"Hey."

Elizabeth looked up at him, blinking.

"Don't go anywhere."

Her lips parted in surprise, and it took her a moment to recover. "Excuse me?"

Jason shifted uneasily and averted his gaze. "I…I was at the door earlier when you were talking to the guys. I didn't mean to listen in, I was just coming over to see you and give you this. I…Look, I heard what you said and I wanted to tell you I was sorry for having anything to do with your wanting to leave."

She was still staring at him in total shock. After all, she, Ritchie and Johnny had planned their conversation perfectly and waited for the racket that ensued when the injured enforcer started to hobble across the hall. She had planned for him to hear everything…She just hadn't expected him to admit that he had.

"I really appreciated how you took care of me," he confessed gruffly. "There haven't been too many people who've done that when I got hurt. And Sonny doesn't count."

He shuddered just thinking it. His idea of a good time while being injured most definitely did _not_ include him and Sonny lounging around in bed together. Good God.

"I would hope not," Elizabeth smirked, as if reading his thoughts.

"You're the reason that I've been healing so well," he added quietly. "It was you. And I really appreciate that, and I'm sorry about what me and Spinelli did."

"Well, to tell you the truth, even if you had told me that Spinelli was on the case, I still probably would have let him do it and stayed with you," Elizabeth confessed, surprising no one more than herself with the admission.

"I hate it when people get hurt," she added hurriedly. "I can't stand it."

The corner of his mouth lifted. "Sounds like you've got this nurturing thing down pat, then."

His smirk only widened when her eyes narrowed. "Are you making fun of me?"

"Look, I'm already injured enough, don't you think? I don't have a death wish."

She grinned and curled her legs up under her, turning her gaze back to the red glass between her palms. It really was very pretty. The only problem was, she couldn't decide what to do with it. She would have kept it just as it was, this thick, solid disk, but she felt it was a crime not to show off something so brilliant and shiny. She'd _have_ to get it made into something. Or maybe several things. There certainly was enough for a pendant and earrings, if she went that route…

"Hey."

Those long, rough fingers once again tickled her neck, and Elizabeth looked over to see Jason staring earnestly back at her.

"Just…don't feel you have to leave."

The corner of her mouth curved, and Elizabeth suddenly didn't trust herself to look at him when she spoke the words that rushed unbidden past her lips, so she focused on the glass in her palm.

"Oh, I don't feel that way anymore."


	27. Chapter 27

_Previously – Jason gives Elizabeth the red glass. _

**Note – **Fun, fun. Already 126,000 words, and we're only about halfway through! That's 25% longer than a full-length romance novel! Jeepers creepers!

Hack | 27Almost a week later at Jake's on a busy night…

"So how are those challenges of yours going?"

Elizabeth beamed proudly over the rim of her glass. "I'm one away from beating the nerd."

Nikolas grinned and took a pull from his own bottle. "Good, good. Glad to hear it. Spinelli still giving you trouble?"

She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "You know, now that I think about it, not really. He's not in my face nearly as much as he was before. If anything, it's like he's sulking in the corners, watching me or something. It's kind of annoying, but in a less aggressive way. So I let him."

"Mm, very benevolent of you."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes at his teasing and set her mug down on the table. "So, you wanna play a round or what?"

"What are we going to wager this time?" Nikolas grinned, his eyes suddenly taking on a decidedly wicked gleam.

She flashed him an enigmatic smirk and grabbed his hand, leading him out of the room and into the little hallway that led into the billiards room. "I'm sure you'll figure something out."

She heard his chuckles, deep and rusty in his chest, and the next thing she knew the Prince had grabbed her gently around the waist and pulled her back. She expected him to catch her in his arms, and Elizabeth was mildly stunned when he turned her around and slammed her up against the wall, leaning down with a predatory smile.

"I always do, don't I?"

Elizabeth laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck as he pressed closer. Her thumbs swept through the thick black hair at his nape, and she smiled smugly. "Well, you certainly never disappoint."

That earned her a hot, masculine smile as Nikolas lowered his mouth until his breath fluttered over her moist lips. "That's a good thing for a man to know."

His lips brushed hers in a gesture so familiar, so comfortable, so trusting. Elizabeth smiled against his mouth and nudged his nose sweetly with hers as Nikolas's warm hands skimmed boldly up and down her rib cage over the emerald green silk blouse she wore. He reached her breast and squeezed gently, careful to keep his movements hidden from any wandering eyes.

And that was as far as the refined Prince was willing to go in the dark corner of the hallway, so he kept his hands at the narrow pinch of her waist and kissed her soundly. She let him, something he hadn't expected. But when he used his hold on her waist to gently tug her forward and presumably toward the stairs up to the second floor where he kept a room just to irritate his uncle, Elizabeth pulled back.

"I can't."

Her voice was low and husky but her cheeks weren't flushed, as they usually were when he was attempting to take her to bed. "Why not?"

She nibbled her lower lip and averted her gaze, but kept her hands on his biceps. "You know why."

And so did she.

Shit.

She had no business kissing Nikolas now, not like this.

And the momentary surge of guilt that came up as she let him hold her was one that she was unaccustomed to, a fact that only made her close her eyes and mentally kick herself once more.

"Because of Jason?"

Elizabeth didn't open her eyes. "Yeah."

"Because he doesn't _share_?"

She could hear the sarcasm and amusement alike in her friend's voice, and her eyes flew open. "You don't have to get nasty about it-"

But one look in his warm chestnut eyes let her know that Nikolas wasn't being nasty at all. She was at once struck by the clarity of his gaze, part amused and part smug, and for the first time in a long time, she was speechless.

Just what was his deal tonight?

The corner of the mouth she'd kissed so many times twitched, and the Prince looked suspiciously like he was doing his best to contain a smile.

Bastard.

"Elizabeth, just what are your feelings toward that louse of a friend of mine?"

She blinked, thrown a little off-guard by both the question and the unfamiliar smugness in his eyes. "I – What do you mean?"

"What is the extent of your feelings for Jason?"

Elizabeth licked her lips. "He's…Well, I guess he's kind of a friend."

"Kind of?"

"A friend with benefits, fine," she bristled, realizing where he sought to lead her. "Why do you want to know?"

Nikolas shrugged with disarming nonchalance, the picture of innocence. "I was just curious and wondering if you'd gone and developed any _additional _feelings for him."

Her mouth fell open, and she let out an indignant squawk. "I-"

"Because you're not so innocent as to not realize that if you were to follow me upstairs and spend the night in my room," his voice dropped to a low, rusty, almost melodic timbre, "no one would know but you and I."

Elizabeth's mouth dried up when he lifted one hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles, then repeated the gesture on the other hand.

"And honey, I wouldn't tell."

She tried to force her thick tongue to push out a word, but found that she couldn't and instead stood there sputtering like an idiot. And what made it worse was that this seemed to amuse Nikolas.

"See? You know this. You know that there's nothing stopping you from walking up those stairs and letting me do a hundred wicked things to you." He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, "Except for whatever you feel for Jason."

"It has nothing to do with feelings," she squawked. "I gave him my word."

This earned her a mischievous and amused grin, and Nikolas actually shook his head at her as if she was a schoolgirl that had given him the wrong answer to a math problem. "Elizabeth, you're one of my closest friends, if not the closest, so I know you won't hate me when I tell you that your word doesn't mean as much as you might think. I can remember plenty of times when you've gone back on it because it seemed advantageous.

"You can't help it," he added when her brows pinched together and she opened her mouth to put him in his place. "You've been raised that way. And it's not like you've ever gone back on your word when it really mattered."

Nikolas shook his head again, almost to himself, and braced his hand on the wall right by her head. "Elizabeth, all I'm saying is that you're a shrewd woman, and you have long since learned how to watch out for your best interests. And if you felt that it was in your best interest to fall back into old habits with me, no promise to Jason would stop you."

It was scary how well he knew her – well enough to tell her things about herself that even she hadn't yet realized.

"You're reaching, Cassidine."

"I don't think so," he answered with an infuriatingly confident little grin. "And I don't mind telling you that I was skeptical of your whole arrangement with Jason since you told us."

"Yeah?" God, she hated it when he got all cocky and dogmatic with her. "And why would you be skeptical? You and I had the same arrangement."

"Not so," Nikolas reminded her with a wag of his finger. "If you remember, I was with other women while I was with you. And you were seeing someone, too."

"Just one."

"Doesn't matter," he smiled widely. "We never put these sorts of restrictions on each other. If we had…I would have fallen for you completely before too long."

Her lips parted in surprise. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that it is very difficult to have sex with one person and keep your feelings out of it," Nikolas replied matter-of-factly, his gentle eyes probing hers. "Very difficult, Elizabeth. Maybe that was why I insisted on our particular terms – because I didn't wish to fall in love with you or anyone else, for that matter."

"But-"

"Answer me honestly," he interrupted softly. "Don't you have feelings for me? Even just a little?"

"…You answer first."

Her instincts for self-preservation amused him, and Nikolas smiled warmly down at her before ducking his head once. "Yes, I do. I suspect I always will. I don't love you, exactly, but I feel that if we had done it the right way, I would have."

Her nod would have been imperceptible had he not been waiting for it. "Yeah, I can understand that. I've thought that, too."

"So you see?" Nikolas asked gently, taking her hands and pulling her out of the dark corner and into the center of the hallway. "Do you see what I'm trying to say, Elizabeth? There wouldn't necessarily be anything wrong with having feelings for Jason, given the terms of your situation. And it certainly wouldn't be anything you needed to hide for other people's sake."

Her eyes narrowed, and Elizabeth pulled her hands from his and planted them deliberately on her hips. "Hey, you wouldn't have kissed me right now to try to get me to admit my 'alleged' feelings for Jason, would you?"

He flashed her an impish grin and clasped his hands behind his back, lifting up for a moment on the balls of his feet. "Oh, I don't know – would I be that dastardly?"

"In a heartbeat," she muttered, grabbing a hold of his shirt and hauling him into the billiards room. "Idiot. And just for that, I get to break."

~*~*~*~*~*~

His night had been rather uneventful so far, but he'd at least managed to get out of the penthouse. Making sure that Sonny was tied up with Stan, talking about the surveillance they'd set up on Salvatore and the rest, he'd crept out and took the elevator down and then drove to Jake's, wisely choosing to leave his bike in the garage. There would have been no way that he could have managed his weight atop that thing a mere twelve days after his injury. He didn't even want to try.

As it was, he could walk around on it all right, but if he stood or moved about for too long it started to ache. He had even been able to take the stairs up and down a few times a day, which he felt was helping to strengthen the muscles of his legs after more than a week in bed.

And tonight, he'd gone out to Jake's and had a few beers with the guys. They had gone through a pitcher or two when Max suggested playing a few rounds. Jason had reluctantly agreed – he wasn't really in the mood for pool that night – and had followed them over to the tables. That was when he saw Nikolas and Elizabeth standing in the corner of the hallway leading out from the main recreation room, engrossed in serious conversation, and he'd opted to leave before she saw him.

Knowing her, she'd worry and fuss over him instead of having any fun with her friends, and he was a little hungry and a little tired anyway. And he didn't much feel like pushing himself or the recovery process – if he did, he knew he'd have to add a few more days to his total recovery time just to compensate for premature exertion. And that was the last thing he wanted.

So he came home and puttered around his empty penthouse. Spinelli was at some club meeting on campus, something about helping the techies set up the new shipment of computers PCU received thanks to a generous grant, and the apartment was empty. The stupid doves were roosting on the balcony ledge, and Jason glared at them before heading across the hall to Sonny's.

He considered walking in and heading straight to the kitchen – there was no food in Penthouse II – but reconsidered. Knowing Sonny, he'd probably make him a second dinner or something. So Jason turned around and limped into Elizabeth's penthouse instead, knowing that she was just the type of girl who'd keep her pantry stocked with some of his favorite snacks.

He had just found a bag of barbequed potato chips and was walking back into the living room when the door opened and Elizabeth entered, tossing her purse on the desk before looking at him in surprise.

"Jason. What are you doing here?"

He shrugged, trying to keep the gesture indifferent and non-committal. "Hungry. Thought I'd stop by here instead of going over to Sonny's."

"He'd make you a five-course meal right now," she agreed wryly, kicking off her ballet flats and mincing over to the couch. The damn things gave her pinky toes blisters; they were going straight into the trash the next time she got up. Pity they were so cute, though.

"Hey, you wanna get me a soda or a beer or something?"

"Sure," he mumbled around a mouthful of chips before dropping the bag in her lap. "Here. Be right back."

"So what did you do tonight?" Elizabeth called out, stretching her legs onto the coffee table and pulling out a handful to munch on.

"I went to Jake's for a bit with the guys."

The nonchalant reply made her choke on her chips. "You did?"

"Yeah," he called back, and she could hear him opening up her cabinets, presumably in search of a glass. "It was me, Max, Johnny, and Ritchie. Milo showed up when I was leaving."

Elizabeth waited on the couch, tense and still, and Jason didn't disappear.

"I saw you and Nikolas there."

"Yeah?" Her voice came out meeker than she would have liked.

"Yeah," he called back, still rummaging through her cabinets. Then he stilled, sounding as if he'd found something unexpected, and Elizabeth cringed when she heard him stomping back out into the main room.

"You know, I never pegged you as a cheater."

His tight, low voice made her heart thunder, and Elizabeth sat with her back toward him for a long moment before miraculously managing to turn around and face him. "Jason, I-"

Her lips parted in surprise when she saw him standing there, barefoot and smirking, holding up her George Foreman grill.

"_Cheater_."

She melted into relieved laughter and clapped a hand over her mouth. "Oh, dear God."

"You know," he purred, eyeing the grill and then arching a brow at her, "Sonny's gonna _kill_ you if he sees this."

"Don't I know it," the brunette groaned, burying her face in her hands. "Do me a favor and-"

"Elizabeth? You in there, sweetheart?"

The brunette's eyes widened and she was up off the couch like a shot. "Quick! Hide it before he sees!"

But darting back into the kitchen was out of the question for Jason, so Elizabeth hopped over the back of the couch and snatched the incriminating evidence from his hands, then shot into the kitchen like she was off to win the Belmont. "Stall him!"

"Elizabeth?"

"Uh – come on in, Sonny." Jason cleared his throat and moved a little to his left, physically barring the hallway into the kitchen with his body as Sonny stepped in.

"Oh, Jason, good," the mobster greeted him. "I was going to ask Elizabeth if she'd seen you or knew where you were, but here you are."

"Hey, Sonny," Elizabeth beamed, absently wringing her hands together as she appeared from the kitchen. "Do you need something?"

"I needed to talk to Jason," her guardian explained, gesturing to the enforcer. "Just found him here. Anyway, I just got out of a meeting with Stan and we've nailed down our rival enforcer friend's whereabouts for this whole week. I need you to help me finalize the details of the hit, and then I'll put someone on it."

Jason's eyes turned to steel and he shook his head, forgetting for a minute that Elizabeth was even in the room. "No."

Sonny arched a brow. "What do you mean, no? Yes. Yes, we have to take this guy out, once and for all, and send a strict message to Don Salvatore."

"I mean, no one's carrying out the hit but me."

Elizabeth gasped. "Jason, you can't – your leg."

"My leg's almost healed," he replied without even looking at her. "It'll be fine in a few days, and that's when we'll place the hit. This is mine, Sonny – you can't give it to someone else to do."

The mobster knew better than to argue with his best friend when he was like this. "All right. If you think you can do it, you can do it. I know you wouldn't just take this assignment to prove a point."

He paused emphatically, giving Jason the chance to reconsider, and saw when the enforcer remained unflinching in his assertion that it wasn't the case.

"All right," he repeated as Elizabeth watched, horrified. "Four days from now, he's having dinner with Tagliati at his home – Paolo's home, I mean. We'll do it then."

"We'll go over the details now, at your place," Jason continued, already heading for the door. "The less we have to go over closer to the date, the better."

"Whatever you want," Sonny shrugged, leading the way out. "Goodnight, sweetheart."

Elizabeth's fingers were still pressed to her lips as she watched the two men depart. "Good…night."


	28. Chapter 28

Previously – Nikolas and Elizabeth hang out at Jake's; Sonny and Jason discuss a hit as Elizabeth listens in.

**Note – **Again, I can't say this enough: thanks for the truly lovely feedback, everyone. :) I read each and every single response and it just tickles me pink…with polka-dots.

Hack | 28Four nights later…

"I have a horrible feeling about this."

Spinelli looked up, a spoonful of macaroni halfway from his mouth. "You said that the last time Stone Cold went to carry out a hit, and he came home with a slug in his leg."

Across the table, Elizabeth glowered ferociously at him. "I _know_ that. And I had a horrible feeling that night, too."

"That's my point," the boy sniffed, sounding uncharacteristically high-handed. "You'd think that the Dragon would have figured out by now that she's jinxing the Stone Cold one."

Her jaw dropped as Sonny wandered out of the kitchen, stirring something in a large green cooking bowl under his arm. "So you're saying that Jason getting hurt was _my_ fault?"

"Well, you certainly didn't help matters," Spinelli shrugged.

Sonny frowned at the boy but let it go, instead turning to Elizabeth. "Something wrong, sweetheart?"

Elizabeth pushed away her plate and balanced her chin on her knuckles. "I've got a horrible feeling about tonight."

"Couldn't you say that you have a good feeling?" Spinelli asked around his last mouthful of macaroni. "Couldn't you just lie? If you do, maybe you can spare Stone Cold from getting one between the eyes."

"Spinelli," Sonny scolded, using his free hand to stack up the dirty plates and lift them. "Can't you kids find something nice to talk about?"

Elizabeth didn't even look up as he left the room. "Stupid nerd."

"Hey, don't blame me because you keep getting Stone Cold hurt."

"I do not keep getting him hurt!"

"You do, too. Every word out of your mouth is like some horrible, morbid prophecy. You're the harbinger of doom."

"Your face is the harbinger of doom."

"…Well played."

"I thought so."

Neither one said anything for a long time after that. Spinelli pulled out one of his books for class, a slim paperback about twice as tall as it was wide, and read at the table. Elizabeth, for her part, remained staring at the spine of his book, hopelessly lost in her thoughts.

All of which seemed to irrevocably come back to focus on one:

Jason Morgan was stupid.

Really, there couldn't be any other word for a man who'd just gotten over a terrible gunshot wound and traipsed out to hang around in the trees and attempt the same maneuver. And wasn't that the very definition of stupidity – doing the same thing a number of times but expecting different results?

Damn stupid man.

If she had her way, he would be tucked safely across the hall in Penthouse II, watching TV and yelling at Spinelli for being such a pain in the ass. Yes, that's exactly how she would have liked it. Basically, she liked anything that involved anyone yelling at Spinelli for being a pain in the ass.

But no matter what, her little scenario would _not_ have allowed for that stupid man to be sitting with his little gun in a tree in the dark outside some stranger's house. Who let him be an enforcer in the first place, anyway? This had to be all Sonny's fault. Couldn't he have found anyone else?

"Here, guys, have some pudding."

Sonny appeared as if out of thin air and set two glass dishes of pudding down in front of Elizabeth and Spinelli. He'd even added a fat dollop of whipped cream to the snack, tossed on a generous pitch of chocolate sprinkles, and added one of those vanilla-chocolate swirl biscuit sticks with the chocolate fudge on the inside.

He figured if the kids went into insulin shock, at least then Spinelli would stop bothering Elizabeth and she'd stop worrying about Jason and he could finally have some damn peace and quiet in his own house.

Sonny had just about come to terms with the whole arrangement, actually, and was on the verge of accepting it as solid, set-in-stone routine: Every time Jason left to carry out a hit, Sonny would stay at his penthouse and make pudding for the kids. That was what would happen.

Spinelli, bless him, had already withdrawn a heaping spoonful of his dessert and stuck it right in his mouth with a loud, smacking _gloomp_. "Dig in, Dragon, what are you waiting for?"

Elizabeth trailed her fingertip along the edge of the glass dish. "I'm not really that hungry."

"At least have the cookie stick. It's got chocolate syrup inside. What will they think of next? I ask you, Mister Corinthos Sir."

"That stuff's going to kill you."

They both ignored him.

"Just try a bite," Spinelli urged, wiping chocolate off his face with the back of his hand. "Just one."

Elizabeth swirled her spoon in the crème, licked it off, and found it quite to her liking. "You added something new to it this time, Sonny."

"I did," came the enigmatic reply. "See if you can guess. You'll probably have to eat more in order to be sure."

So Elizabeth took another small bite of her pudding, and Spinelli took the opportunity to engage her in conversation.

"Superman trumps Batman like whoa."

Well, it was more like an argument.

But whatever it was, it wasn't worth quibbling over the word. Because that simple sentence, delivered with haughty innocence as only Spinelli could manage, succeeded in distracting Elizabeth for the next hour, and for that Sonny was very grateful.

~*~*~*~*~*~

A little after midnight…

Elizabeth rubbed the heel of her hands to her eyes as she shuffled back to her penthouse. She had spent the entire night there, first eating pudding at the table with Spinelli and discussing old superhero cartoons they used to watch, and then curled up on the couch with a steaming mug of cocoa and DVDs of those aforementioned old superhero cartoons. Thanks to Spinelli, who kept putting one disk in after the other, she hadn't had much time to give voice to her apprehensions regarding Jason's assignment.

It didn't make any sense for her to worry over him, she knew that.

But that didn't stop her.

He was, of course, much older than her. And he had been a part of this life much longer than she. This was his job, and she understood that he was quite good at it. And if neither Sonny nor Spinelli nor the guards worried about him when he was out taking care of business, why should she?

That was a question Elizabeth wasn't sure she was comfortable answering.

Or even thinking about.

And it was all Nikolas's fault.

In all truth, it was her friend's stunt at Jake's the other night that continued to haunt her and colored all matters, including Jason's most recent assignment. His words kept repeating over and over in her head, about how you couldn't have sex with one person and manage to keep your feelings entirely detached and compartmentalized.

But Elizabeth liked compartmentalization. She liked it a whole lot.

She had one compartment in her life for Sonny, the doting father figure who was ridiculously concerned with proprieties considering what he did for a living. She had another compartment for Spinelli the Foe, the one that never let her gain an inch without a fight, and another sub-compartment for Spinelli the Almost Tolerable Nerdikins, the one that kept her entertained and distracted when she really needed it most, and whom she could actually enter into a conversation about technical crap with. She had a large compartment for Johnny, Max, Milo, Ritchie, Stan, and Nikolas, and all their nights at Jake's spent drinking beer and playing darts. She had a compartment for Alexis, who was the closest thing to a mother figure she'd ever known other than that shrill harpy, Carolyn Webber, who had set in on her the moment she woke up in her hospital room.

And she had another compartment for Jason Morgan, Bed Buddy. That compartment included all their sparring, both in bed and out. It included their teasing looks, their pointed barbs, their fights, and of course, all the wicked things they did to each other under the cover of darkness.

And wasn't that good enough?

Because she really didn't want to have to expand that compartment to include anything more, Nikolas and his stupid words be damned.

Elizabeth yawned and let herself into her penthouse, softly shutting the door behind her. She had asked Sonny if she could perhaps spend the night with him, in her old room at Penthouse IV, and the old man had practically tripped over himself telling her that she was most welcome to. Naturally, this prompted Spinelli to announce that he would be spending the night as well. Sonny had readily agreed to this arrangement.

So now she was back just to change into her pajamas, grab her pillow and toothbrush, and make sure all her lights and appliances were turned off. And then she'd set the air conditioning for the night and head over to Sonny's.

Her footsteps were heavy as she plodded up the stairs in the dark. The layout was almost identical to Penthouse IV, and just a little different than Penthouse II, and she could find her way to her bedroom with her eyes closed and her hands tied behind her back.

Elizabeth muffled another yawn and pushed her bedroom door open, and then almost choked on her yawn when it became a gasp.

Good God, Jason Morgan was lounging on her bed as if he damn well belonged there.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Elizabeth Webber had the best bed he'd ever slept in.

Maybe that was why it was so hard for Jason to drag himself out of it when he had to.

It was a combination of her 800-thread count sheets (he hadn't even known they made those), her abundant collection of soft, goose-down feather pillows, her handmade blankets and comforters, one of a kind as far as he'd heard, and the sweet but musky scent of her that clung to the sheets and the skirt and the sham and just enveloped him every time he slid in.

And that same bed was where he found himself after he'd returned home from his assignment. Oh, he knew he should probably head over to Sonny's to check in – even though he very rarely did that; a phone call to Stan placed on the way back to Harborview Towers usually took care of his timecard responsibilities – or even to his own penthouse to see what Spinelli was up to so late.

But he hadn't done that.

When the elevator climbed fifteen stories up to his floor and let him out, Jason found himself sauntering down the hall and slipping into her penthouse. He had kind of hoped that she was there. For a second, he thought she was. There was a light on in the kitchen and he had entered, but a quick look around showed him that it was just a night-light that turned on automatically in the dark.

So he'd done the first thing that came to mind and fixed himself a sandwich. Elizabeth's kitchen was modeled just like Sonny's, except he wasn't afraid to set foot in it. The kitchen in Penthouse IV was the Promised Land, and only the select could enter there. And on the rare occasions when the Select did wander in, they knew that their every move was watched and scrutinized by a Higher Power – Sonny, naturally – that held them to an even higher standard of conduct there.

It was a pain in the ass, was what it was.

Even though Sonny was his best friend, Jason had never once felt like he could just wander into his kitchen, grab a beer from the fridge, pull out a few condiments and bread and cold cuts and fix himself a sandwich on the island. Sonny would freak out about the crumbs on the floor and on the cutting board, and then he'd freak out about the meat being so close to the vegetables, and then inevitably Jason would have put the damn mustard back in the wrong place and Sonny would have reordered his whole refrigerator just to put his own mind at ease.

Sometimes he wondered, between Sonny and Alexis, who really suffered from OCD.

But Elizabeth's kitchen was different. She didn't hang her kitchen utensils on the wall in a most intimidating manner; she stored them neatly in drawers, as she did just about everything in the kitchen. The countertops were always bare and clean, perfect to sit on or fix sandwiches on. She didn't seem to care about how things were placed in her refrigerator, either, and he knew that if he made a sandwich and put things back in the wrong place, she'd never notice in a million years.

She had all the same food items and utensils in her kitchen that Sonny did, but for some reason, hers was much more inviting.

So Jason made his sandwich, accidentally leaving the mustard out because he just wasn't good at remembering those sorts of things, and ate it standing on the balcony overlooking the sleepy little town of Port Charles. He liked her balcony, which was bigger than his and Spinelli's and boasted a few hanging flowerpots and a large chaise armchair always partly hidden under a color-worn but very soft yellow afghan.

He'd taken her once on the armchair. And she'd seemed to enjoy it.

Maybe that was why he liked her balcony so much.

After that, he'd wandered up to her bedroom without quite knowing why.

No, that wasn't quite true. He knew why.

It was because he liked her penthouse a little more than he liked her own.

It was silly, and it was something he'd never, ever admit in his right mind, but it was true. Even though the floor plans for Penthouse II and Penthouse VI were very similar in design, the atmosphere was as different as day and night.

Jason wasn't a totally hopeless _guy_: he did notice these things, especially when there was such a marked difference. The penthouse he shared with Spinelli was…a pad. It was really nothing more than a bachelor pad. They were two men who did exactly what they pleased, and their apartment reflected that. The entertainment center, with the mounted plasma screen and the high-tech stereo, was the focal point of the entire main room. Their bedrooms were unembellished and generally free from clutter, unless you counted Spinelli's dirty clothes, which lived (and yes, lived was the correct word to use because Jason was positive there were living things festering there) in heaps on his floor along with CDs left in stacks of varying length.

Their closets were more than half empty, as were their dresser drawers, because they really had nothing more to store than a few shirts, a few pairs of underwear, enough socks for one week plus laundry day, an odd suit, and about two good pairs of jeans each. Their bathrooms held little more than one (yes, just one) spare roll of toilet paper and their razors. Their kitchen was basically bare except for take-out containers and almost empty packs of moldy bread. They didn't even have a dining table, for fuck's sake!

But Elizabeth's penthouse…

Wow.

It smelled nice. That was the first thing anyone would notice upon walking through the front door. He had no idea what it was, especially since she kept the windows closed and barred out all fresh air. But somehow, her penthouse always smelled nice, and her furniture never emitted strange, questionable odors. There were never pizza boxes under her sofa, either, or in her hall closets.

She had a vase of artificial flowers in each room to brighten it up, and had selected tall, dark furnishings that made her penthouse seem very warm and lived-in. Her kitchen walls boasted a colorful sampler or two, along with a brightly painted clock that Francis had apparently put together from scratch for her.

Her mantle and her walls were full of pictures. Unlike him, she had never lost her ability to see photos and drawings. There were several of her and Sonny in various places – outside Kelly's on a summer morning, at the Nurse's Ball, even astride horses and wearing matching cowboy hats. There was one of her and Alexis, both of them dressed in evening gowns and presumably attending the Nurse's Ball. She had even collected pictures of her with each of her friends – her and Nikolas, her and Milo, her and Max, her and Ritchie, her and Stan – and Jason had noticed that each man in question had scrawled something in black marker on the picture he shared with the brunette. They were silly little messages, most likely inside jokes, but were a testament to the almost magical bonds she had forged with the men that had started out as her colleagues.

And there was even one of her and Spinelli peeking out from behind their computers with matching cheeky grins. It looked like it was taken on the campus of PCU, and there was something terribly sweet about her taking the time and effort necessary to include Jason's young friend in the gallery of her life.

The rest of her penthouse was similarly warm and inviting. Her guest bedrooms were all decorated differently, with different color schemes and treatments, designed so any guest would feel most welcomed and safe. And her master bedroom…well, obviously, that was his favorite part of the house.

And that was why he had eventually found himself there, alone, after his little snack downstairs. It didn't matter that she wasn't there: in an odd way, he liked this stolen moment. So with nothing else to do, he'd flopped down on the bed and thought to rest a bit.

The assignment had gone smoothly enough. He had arrived on time, waited long enough to get a clean shot, taken that shot, and gotten away without any problems thanks to Ritchie's quick thinking and fearless driving.

There would be no more trouble from Don Tagliati's enforcer. In fact, the Don would do well to take an ad out in the classifieds and hire another.

But despite the unexpected ease with which he'd executed the hit, his leg was starting to bother him a bit. So really, settling down on Elizabeth's bed was the smart thing to do, if one looked at the situation at all logically.

And once his head had touched the pillow…oof. Nothing short of an act of God could have gotten him out of her bed.

He stretched out, taking his shoes off with the toes of the other foot and letting them fall to the floor with a loud thunk, and then scooted up to the head of the bed a bit. Once settled, he folded his hands on his chest and stared up at the ceiling, enjoying the sound of something other than Spinelli's _The Academy Is…_ CDs – namely, the quiet.

And that was when he heard her coming up the stairs. Instead of getting up, straightening the rumpled covers, and fumbling around for an excuse, Jason stayed put. They were far past the stage where he needed to be uncomfortable at being found at her place. It didn't matter that she certainly never lounged around his place, or his bed (most of that was due to Spinelli's presence); Jason had long since made sure that he was not an unwelcome or unexpected presence in her penthouse.

And thankfully, she didn't point out that such a thing was against their rules. In fact, he doubted that she even remembered that.

He could hear her in the hall now, but he was too damn comfortable where he was. And then her hand was at the door and she was walking in, apparently lost in her silent reverie. She was tired, too, because she yawned, and then she saw him and choked when her yawn became a gasp.

Jason turned his face sideways in the dark, his eyes trailing up and down her silhouette, and smiled a slow, hot, masterful smile as she took in the sight of him lounging on her bed.

"Hey."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Was it possible for a man's voice to ooze sex?

Because Elizabeth didn't recall any other word she'd ever heard in her entire life being as hot as that 'hey' Jason had just issued to her.

For a moment, she couldn't quite find her voice. And then, she not only found it, she flew to his side and hopped up on the bed next to him.

"What are you doing here? When did you come in? How did the assignment go? Are you sure you're okay? How's your leg? Why didn't you call us? What are you doing here?"

Jason just lay there with his crossed arms supporting his head and smiled at the litany of questions. He'd be willing to bet that the normally self-possessed brunette hadn't even realized she'd repeated herself.

"I got in about half an hour ago," he replied easily. "Everything went fine, and I'm fine, and my leg is fine."

She sighed with relief and brushed her hair out of her face. "Good. I was so worried when you left, but as long as you say that you haven't aggravated your injury-"

"You were worried?"

The uncertain tilt of his head and the hesitancy she heard in his voice made her pause. "Of course I was worried."

His uncertainty melted into his most well used expression: self-assured cockiness. "You were worried."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes at his smug, almost boastful smile. "What are you, six? Gonna give me a hard time because I admitted that?"

"Technically, I'm nine," he reminded her with infectious good humor, given the fact that he'd just shown up at her penthouse unannounced after killing a man over a manicotti dinner. "Nine and a half."

"You act like it."

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

He eyed her suspiciously but couldn't keep the grin off his face. "I bet."

Elizabeth found herself smiling along even though she had severely tipped her hand by telling him she worried. But now that she had, she might as well engage in a little more truth-telling tonight. "I had the worst feeling that something bad was going to happen to you."

His expression became solemn as he watched her from under sandy lashes. "Yeah?"

Elizabeth nodded. "Just the worst feeling that you'd come home hurt…or worse."

Jason rolled over onto his side, supporting his weight on an elbow, and tilted her chin down so that she had no choice but to look at him. "I wish you wouldn't worry like that. There's no reason for it."

But in his own voice, Jason heard himself daring her to tell him there was.

And that, of course, was the one thing Elizabeth couldn't do. Not precisely, anyway.

"Look, I like you, Jason," she confessed with an almost self-deprecating smile. "I don't know why, and God help me, but I kinda do. And I don't like the thought of people I like getting hurt."

The corner of his mouth hooked up and Jason slowly released her chin and flattened his palm out against the soft comforter. "Lucky for you that I don't plan on getting hurt."

That cocky, self-assured bravado of his finally proved good for something: Elizabeth smiled. And that, of course, was reason enough for Jason to smile. It was getting oddly annoying, his wanting to make her smile and wanting to make her eyes dazzle and all that other ridiculous stuff he'd thought about over the past week, but he figured there was very little he could do about it. Hopefully, it was just a phase. Like when Spinelli decided he had to wear his striped shirts with his plaid shorts every single day.

Jason settled down on the bed, flat on his back, and motioned her over with an outstretched hand poised to cup the back of her neck. "Come here."

And as he closed his eyes and felt the sweet pressure of her lips against his, Jason liked to think that even if he hadn't told her to come, she still would have.


	29. Chapter 29

_Previously – Elizabeth has a bad feeling, and then discovers Jason in her bed._

**Note – **Chapter 29 was sooooo long that I ended up cutting it off after 15 pages and starting Chapter 30, and I'm posting them together for continuity's sake. They really do need to be the same chapter, but even I like some uniformity, and I didn't want to get over 22 pages for a single chapter. I really hope you enjoy!

**Hack | 29**

As usual, Elizabeth wasn't in bed with him when he woke up.

Jason yawned and stretched, but remained on his side. It was just so damn hard to get out of her bed sometimes. But he knew he couldn't stay there forever, and he already had a very annoying habit of sleeping in whenever he slept with her. So he pushed himself up onto his elbows and rolled over, languidly searching for the clothes that had been hastily discarded the night before.

He managed to locate his black cargo pants and boxers, but couldn't find his shirt. That probably meant that Elizabeth was wearing it. And sure enough, when he padded down the stairs and into the main room, there she was by the phone machine, checking her messages with a cup of coffee in one hand and the neckline of his t-shirt hanging low off her creamy shoulder.

She glanced over her shoulder at him and deleted the last message off the machine. "Hey."

He was well used to her absent, almost irreverent greetings. "Hey."

Elizabeth must have been in a good mood this morning because she actually followed that up with a question. "You hungry?"

"I could eat." Especially if she was cooking for him, which would have been a first.

"You wanna go over to Sonny's, or just head out to Kelly's? Either way, he won't mind."

Jason pursed his lips and considered it. If he went to Sonny's, he'd have to talk about the hit, which he really didn't care to do. Not because he didn't want to speak of it in front of Elizabeth, but just because the thought of it was tedious. Everything had gone down fine, and there was no need to rehash it. It was done, and it was good. End of story. And besides that, if they went to Sonny's then Spinelli would be there and he would have a million stupid questions.

"Let's go out to Kelly's."

She arched a brow at him. "Yeah? Normally you prefer Sonny's."

"Don't feel like it today."

"Yeah? And why not?"

He latched onto her waist and tugged her forward, smoothly changing the subject with a hot, smirky little look. "Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you're standing here, wearing nothing but my shirt."

He'd thought to make her blush, and was surprised when her lips puckered in indication that she was holding back a smile. "You want it back?"

~*~*~*~*~*~

"I look like the Medusa, don't I? All snake-headed-y."

Sonny glanced up as he poured two cups of coffee. "I don't know what that is, but it sounds disgusting."

Spinelli licked his fingers and ran them through his hair, trying to make himself look more presentable. "It's a mythological Greek she-monster, Mister Corinthos Sir. She has snakes for hair. Hey, speaking of snakes, is the Dragon up yet? I wanted her to quickly proofread my paper before class today."

"I wouldn't know," he shrugged. "She said she was going to sleep over here last night, but I guess she ended up going back to her place."

"Think she'd mind if I went over and asked her?"

Sonny shook his head. "Nah. And while you're over there, tell her to get dressed and come over for breakfast. The pancakes will get cold."

"Will do, Mister Corinthos Sir," the boy saluted before making a beeline for the door. He closed it securely behind him, saluted the Silent Sentinels stationed in the hall, and headed for Elizabeth's.

"Whoa, whoa," Max called out, leaving his post and following him. "Where do you think you're going, Spaghetti?"

At the other end of the hall, Trevor also had an apprehensive look on his face.

"I just need to ask the Dragon something," Spinelli replied, absently wondering, and not for the first time, why the guards always had such a problem with him walking over to Elizabeth's unannounced.

"Hey, she's probably sleeping," Max tried to convince him. "You know, you guys had a late night last night, and she's probably still out of it. You really wanna make her mad by barging in and waking her up?"

"She needs to get up for breakfast," Spinelli pointed out rationally. "And besides, the Dragon has a routine. She's probably up by now, anyway."

"Yeah, but do you really want to risk-"

"You worry too much, Silent Sentinel. Dragon!" Spinelli pounded on the door and turned the knob. "The Jackal requires your assistance with – Oh, my God!"

Max winced and retreated before he could see anything. "Happy place, happy place. Gotta get to the happy place."

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HIM?!"

Spinelli was, naturally, talking to Jason and Elizabeth, who were currently leaning against the back of the sofa in varying degrees of undress. Stone Cold was dressed in the pants Spinelli had seen him leave Penthouse II in, and the Dragon was wearing the shirt Spinelli had seen him leave Penthouse II in.

But the worst part of this wardrobe sharing was that it appeared as if Stone Cold were trying to retrieve his shirt from the Dragon…by slipping his hands under it and running them up high up her thighs.

Spinelli felt the blood drain out of his face as his eyes darted back and forth between Jason and Elizabeth, both of whom had yet to remove their hands from each other and actually had the nerve to look at him as if he were annoying them with his presence.

"This…this…"

Showing at least a modicum of intelligence, Jason removed his hands from Elizabeth and put them up, tilting his head at the young man. "Spinelli, easy…"

But the boy was beyond such platitudes and assurances. "THIS IS A MOST UNNECESSARY ALLIANCE!"

And then he whirled around, almost falling to the floor, and dashed off down the hall. Elizabeth sighed and rested her arm on Jason's bare shoulder. "Looks like the jig is up, Boris."

"Who?"

"Never mind."

They heard a commotion further down the hall: Max was talking, then Trevor was talking, and then Spinelli was yelling, and then Max started yelling, and then Sonny was yelling at them all to stop yelling. They heard his voice getting closer; apparently, Spinelli was dragging him over.

"Spinelli, will you stop bawling long enough to tell me what happened?"

"-A most unnecessary alliance! The Dragon – Stone Cold – breaking up the band – can't get my deposit back on those accordion lessons – and now they're linking up on a local access network composed of her _penthouse_ – oh, God, what if they've been linking up on a WAN? Who knows how many people could have seen them with that kind of broadband access?"

"Spinelli, I have no idea what you're talking-"

"There." Spinelli swung the door open and glared daggers at Elizabeth, who had her arms looped around Jason's neck and stood there looking most unconcerned considering that Mister Corinthos Sir would soon be shipping her off to a convent where she belonged, the cunning Delilah.

Jason's eyes widened and he quickly let go of the brunette, who languidly removed her arms from around his neck and yawned. Spinelli, seeing that his beloved mentor was now glaring daggers at him, wisely inched behind Sonny's imposing form.

"What's going on here?"

Spinelli pointed at the couple but chose to stay safely out of view. "Stone Cold and the Dragon are…are…engaging in a most unnecessary alliance!"

Sonny frowned, look at the boy, frowned again, looked at Jason and Elizabeth, and then apparently got it. "_Oh_. Is that what you dragged me out of the kitchen for?"

They all stared at him.

"Well? Is that what you came in screaming about? Just that they're together?"

Spinelli opened and shut his mouth, looking rather like a fish out of water. "M-Mister Corinthos Sir, I think you're failing to understand the magnitude of this situation. The Dragon is doing horrible, dirty things to your trusted counsel, your right-hand man, your Stone Cold one."

Sonny folded his arms as Elizabeth glowered at the boy. "So?"

Spinelli swallowed and tried another tack. "Er, your best friend has been sneaking around all this time, putting the moves on your precious little girl?"

Sonny glanced at Jason and Elizabeth, frowned, and turned back to Spinelli. "So?"

Spinelli's jaw dropped. "Okay, now I really have nothing. What the hell's going on here?"

"Look, if this is all you came to tell me, I've got news for you – I already knew," Sonny explained. "And if you don't mind, I'd like to get back to the pancakes before they burn."

He headed for the door and stopped abruptly, as if remembering something, and turned around. "Jason, Elizabeth, are you guys coming over, too? Because I'm making enough for all four of us."

The two exchanged looks and nodded in unison. "Yeah, we'll be there."

Sonny brightened a bit and nodded back before stepping out into the hall. Spinelli, who had _not_ been expecting this particular turn of events, gaped at the mobster's retreating back, then at his mentor, then at his nemesis, and then at the Silent Sentinels that had gathered to watch the show.

"We're going to go change," Elizabeth replied evenly, linking her fingers with Jason's just for the added pleasure of giving Spinelli an ulcer. Apparently linking fingers wasn't anywhere near as 'germy' as holding hands. "And when we get back downstairs, you'd better run, Forrest, run."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Sonny watched humorlessly as Spinelli finished strapping two pillows to himself – one at his stomach, one at his back – with a belt and plopped one of Sonny's stainless steel pots on his head. "Are you sure all that's necessary?"

The boy actually glared – glared! – witheringly at him. "The Jackal is gearing up for battle, Mister Corinthos Sir. He must take all possible precautions."

Sonny shrugged and set four plates down on the dining table. "Okay. I still think you're being a little paranoid."

Spinelli let out a jittery little laugh and adjusted the pot on his head. "Unfortunately, the Jackal will soon be subject to the wrath of both the Dragon and the Stone Cold one. I'm not being paranoid – I'm being realistic."

There was a knock at the door and Spinelli jumped a foot. Max poked his head in and opened the door fully, allowing Jason and Elizabeth to walk in. The two of them were walking awfully close to each other, something that did not escape Spinelli's notice, and the boy held up his fingers in cross formation and hissed when Elizabeth glared daggers at him.

"Good, I'm glad you're both here," Sonny beamed, giving Spinelli a stern look before attending to Jason and Elizabeth. "Sweetheart, the pancakes should be done now. Can you do me a favor and pour the coffee and milk? Oh, and get out the syrup and powdered sugar if you want. I have to talk to Jason for a minute."

With that, he left Spinelli alone with his fearsome, fire-breathing Dragon and basically hauled Jason out into the hallway. One stern look sent Max and Trevor running into the safe confines of Penthouse II, and the two men squared off in the hallway.

"I can explain."

The words burst out of Jason's mouth on reflex, even though he wasn't quite sure how he would explain or even that he had to explain. But after all, Sonny was his best friend, and Elizabeth's only father figure.

And he'd once seen Sonny kill a man with a butter knife.

Such sincere offers would probably go a long way in helping Jason keep all of his body parts safely intact and really, that was what was important here.

But when he looked at his old friend, Sonny was smirking and looking quite amused. "You can explain?"

"I…can."

The mobster stroked the corners of his mouth with just his thumb and forefinger. "Thanks, but I think I can figure it out. You don't have to draw a diagram or anything."

Oh, thank God.

"I just want to know something." His partner's eyes were quite solemn now as they lifted to his. "How long?"

Jason shrugged uneasily. "A couple weeks."

"Since you came back to Port Charles?"

"Fuck, no!" He shook his head and shuddered, recalling his initial impressions of Elizabeth. It certainly wouldn't say very much of his character if, feeling the way he had at the time, he'd barely waited to unpack his duffel bag before jumping the girl. "A few weeks after that."

"And why didn't you tell anyone?"

He tugged on his ear awkwardly, feeling like a teenager being interrogated by his date's father. And in a sense, he was. "Elizabeth didn't really want to say anything. She told the guys to win a dart game, I think, but she wanted to keep it quiet because of…"

"Because of?"

"Spinelli."

Sonny nodded sagely. "Probably a good idea. The poor kid was hyperventilating when he came to get me."

Jason sighed wearily. "Yeah, Elizabeth told me that would happen. I don't think I believed her."

"Kid's got father issues."

"You're telling me."

The men shared a wry smile before Sonny cleared his throat and pushed on to business. "Okay, look, you don't want to hear this any more than I want to say it, so let's just make it quick and painless for the both of us. If you're worried about me putting an end to your relationship with Elizabeth, you don't have to. I'm not going to do that. Besides," Sonny admitted gruffly, "I doubt she'd let me get away with it if I tried."

Before he could stop it, the word was out of his mouth. "…Thanks."

"I'm not thrilled about this," Sonny made sure to emphasize. "Don't take it personally, but you were never the first person I'd have picked for her. I'm not upset about it, either," he strove to clarify before letting out a sigh and dropping his head.

"Damn," he muttered, running a hand through his curls. "Let me at least try to make sense here."

Jason waited patiently as Sonny gathered his thoughts. "You're much older than her, Jason," he finally said. "About eight years older, and that's a big difference considering she's just 21. If you were both older, it wouldn't seem like that big of an age difference, even though it'd still be eight years…obviously."

He was rambling, and Jason absently wondered if Sonny had picked that up from Elizabeth. "And you've seen a lot more than she has. She's lived her whole life here at Harborview, and she's always either with me or with one of the guards. She's led a sheltered life, Jason, and I've tried to keep her away from a lot of things. I'm not sure how that's going to work if you're seeing her."

"I thought you were okay with her being involved with the business."

"I am," Sonny replied tersely. "I have no problem telling her which associate will be eliminated, or giving her our figures, or sharing our routes and transfer numbers with her. But I have a big problem with her getting shot at, or seeing either of us getting shot at, or getting kidnapped or watching one of us kill someone. I'm asking you as a friend – remember that."

Jason nodded slowly. "I will."

"And also remember…" Sonny sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, a habit he'd definitely picked up from Jason. "That I care deeply about both of you. But Elizabeth is a young woman, and I hold myself responsible for her safety and her every happiness. And if you hurt her, Jason, I'm not going to be happy."

There was really nothing to say to that, so Jason didn't make a sound.

"I know how ridiculous this sounds, mostly because I'm telling it to _you_, of all people, but I have some rules." Sonny raised his chin a notch and looked Jason directly in the eye. "I'm not telling you how to live your life, or where to live your life, but as long as you two are together, I'd prefer that you didn't move in together anywhere outside of Harborview Towers. We've got this place reinforced and protected and you're safest here."

It was a very rational thing to say, and Jason didn't mind nodding to it. Besides, he and Elizabeth would not be moving in anywhere together, despite all the time they spent together in her penthouse. He had a feeling that even though Elizabeth was letting some of their other rules slide, she'd have a big problem with him asking her to move in. Unless he asked her to move into Penthouse II – she'd be thrilled. The only problem with that, of course, was that as soon as she moved in, she'd try to move _him_ out.

Sonny cleared his throat, and Jason had the distinct feeling that the older man realized he had zoned out. Once satisfied that he had the enforcer's attention, he continued.

"Also, I want you to always remember her safety. If you're out with her on a date and you feel like you may be distracted and not as vigilant as you always are, _you take a guard with you_. Do you understand?"

A snort escaped him despite the fact that such a gesture wasn't exactly prudent given their situation. "Don't worry," Jason muttered, "we're not going to be doing much dating."

That was against the rules, after all: she wasn't interested in candlelit dinners at whatever restaurant he 'managed to drag his knuckles into.'

Sonny looked at him strangely, and then narrowed his eyes. "That's disgusting."

Jason closed his eyes and swore. "I didn't mean it like _that_," he felt compelled to explain. "Just that…we have rules. And one of them is that I don't drag her to any candlelit dinners at…"

"At?"

"…whatever restaurant I manage to drag my knuckles into."

Sonny stared at him in surprise before letting out a hoot of laughter. "Some rule. She must have a list of them, huh? What, did she get them notarized or something?"

Jason shook his head wearily. "We just think of them as…precautions, I guess."

If he wanted to know what these precautions were against, Sonny didn't show it and didn't ask. Instead, he smoothly changed the subject. "Fair enough, I guess. But I have one more rule."

Jason waited, but his friend didn't continue. Really, he was getting a little sick of these rules but he figured he had to listen – and obey – unless he wanted Sonny to put a bullet in his other leg…or higher. "And that is?"

"Ignorance is bliss," the mobster stated firmly. At Jason's questioning look, he explained, "I don't want to see anything, I don't want to hear anything, I don't want to _know_ anything. Clear?"

Now there was one rule Jason could get behind, and he nodded his head quickly. "Yeah."

"Good," Sonny sighed, looking very much relieved that the whole distasteful conversation was finished. "Let's go back inside and make sure Elizabeth hasn't killed Spinelli."

He started to head back to the door, and that was when Jason realized there was one more thing he wanted to know.

"Ah, Sonny," he started, startled by the hesitancy in his voice.

The older man turned and looked at him over his shoulder. "What?"

"How did you know?"

It was an incomplete question. "How did I know _what_?"

"You said you knew," Jason repeated, jamming his hands into his pockets, "about…me and Elizabeth. How did you know?"

An amused smile played upon his best friend's lips and Sonny looked away, his back still toward Jason. "You didn't seem quite so tense anymore. And you talked to everyone more."

He shrugged, then reached for the doorknob. "I don't know, it was kind of nice."

Then, thinking better of it, Sonny released the knob and turned around, eying his friend with a mixture of curiosity and hopeless amusement. "So now that we've got all that cleared up, I gotta ask…how's it going so far?"

Jason let out a sigh that came out as a groan and seemed to fairly deflate as he scrubbed a hand over his face. "She is _such_ a brat."

Sonny grinned at that, his chest rumbling with laughter. "Yeah, I guess you've got me to blame for that."

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Say Uncle!"

"UNCLE!"

"Say Uncle again!"

"UNCLE!!"

"Now say that I am superior to you in every way!"

Spinelli dug his fingers like claws into the carpet and tried to scramble out from under Elizabeth as she held him pinned to the floor. "Never! I'll die first!"

"Don't think I can't arrange that!"

"Whoa, whoa," Sonny exclaimed as he opened the door and led Jason back into the penthouse. Seeing the commotion, he shot across the room and tried to pry the kids apart. "What's going on here? Elizabeth, what are you doing? Let him go!"

"Not until he tells me I'm superior to him in every way!"

"Modest even in anger," Sonny muttered, grabbing her by the scruff of the neck even though that was a horribly undignified way to handle a young lady. Sometimes, though, Elizabeth left him little choice.

Especially when she held the pot that Spinelli was using as a helmet over her head, keeping it poised and ready to use as a blunt object with which to surely pummel the poor kid.

"That's enough," he ground out, finally tearing the two of them apart with Jason's help. "You two should be ashamed of yourselves! Elizabeth, this is no way for a young woman to behave."

She glared daggers at Spinelli, who by now had scrambled away like a crab and was cowering under the dining table. "I hope he chokes."

"Well, sure," Sonny agreed, "but you do not pin him to the floor and threaten to bash his head in with a pot. Are we clear?"

Good Lord, of all the things he'd never thought he'd say…

"Jason, why don't you help Spinelli out of there," the mobster suggested, maintaining a firm grip on Elizabeth's arm. "I need Elizabeth to help me in the kitchen."

Jason rubbed his hands together as Sonny led the brunette away, his eyes flashing as they sought out Spinelli under the table.

Seeing the murderous glint lurking in his trusted mentor's gaze, Spinelli covered his face with his hands and groaned.

"Not _again…_"

~*~*~*~*~*~

"We need to talk."

Elizabeth planted her hands on her hips and blew her bangs out of her face. "You want me to stop seeing him, don't you?"

Sonny arched a brow at her, looking like the typical supercilious, patronizing male. "Do you want to?"

Her lips twisted to the side as Elizabeth pondered the question before finally replying, "I don't know."

He suspected that there were a lot of things she didn't know, especially regarding what she did or didn't want from Jason, so Sonny let her ambiguous reply go. "I thought you hated Jason."

"I did."

His lips curved. "You did?"

"I _do_," Elizabeth hissed, folding her arms over her chest in a huff.

"Mm. Clearly."

"Oh, stop."

Sonny rolled his eyes and slipped his hands into his pockets. Then, playfulness forgotten, he eased forward and dipped his chin down, looking her directly in the eyes. "I hope you know what you're doing, sweetheart."

She surprised him with a rueful pucker of her lips. "I hope so, too."

Sonny feigned surprise. "What? Elizabeth, being something other than fully self-possessed?"

The brunette looked as if she wanted nothing more than to stick her tongue out at him but miraculously, she resisted the impulse. "Just stop."

Sonny let out a long, quiet breath and tried to gather his thoughts. What did one say to a young woman – that was practically one's daughter, after all, in every way that counted – whom one had just discovered was romantically involved with one's best friend?

Well, any way you looked at it, one was definitely fucked.

Er, screwed.

Er…the loneliest number.

That didn't make any sense.

Sonny frowned, not snapping to attention until Elizabeth started waving her hand in front of his face. "What?"

"You still here?" she asked, eyeing him suspiciously. "You looked like you'd totally checked out."

He cleared his throat and tried to get back on track. "About you and Jason…"

She looked almost amused at his lack of self-possession, making Sonny want to throttle her. "About me and Jason…"

"Why didn't you tell anyone?"

"I told the guys," she replied defensively.

"Why them?"

"Because I didn't want Ritchie to win the darts game."

"_Elizabeth_."

"Fine," she sighed, running a hand through her loose waves. "I figured they were going to find out anyway because they're all always in the hall, and they wouldn't miss Jason sneaking over to my penthouse. And then they'd never let me or Jason hear the end of it, since they were the ones we vented to about how much we hated each other. So I figured I'd tell them on my terms and play it off like it was no big deal."

She arched her brow defensively when she saw how he was looking at her. "Well, it worked. They never teased me about being with him, and they stopped bothering him after he threatened them. And they always stopped Spinelli from walking in when they knew…Jason was over."

Sonny was pleased to see that she at least had the good sense to blush at that. Really, why should he be the only one thoroughly uncomfortable about this? It hardly seemed fair.

"Any other reason?"

She wrung her hands nervously. "Well, there was always…Spinelli."

"What about him?"

"I didn't want him to know," Elizabeth admitted quietly. "You know how he is when it comes to Jason. Nerd's got father issues."

"You're telling me."

"Huh?"

"Never mind, just go on."

"Oh. Right." Elizabeth snapped her mouth shut and appeared to gather her thoughts. "I knew he'd be really upset if he found out that me and Jason were together. Plus, I knew he'd think that…that I only did it to make him upset."

Sonny leaned against the island and crossed his arms over his chest, his stance matching hers as they squared off. "Would he be wrong?"

Her jaw dropped, making her look like an owl. A very angry and offended owl. "Sonny!"

"What?" he shrugged. "Obviously, it occurred to you, so it's a valid question."

"No, I'm not with Jason because I want to hurt Spinelli!"

That was his cue. "Then why are you with him?"

Her eyes narrowed and he could see her mind racing, trying to come up with something valid to say. "Because…because…"

Sonny leaned forward. It seemed to be expected. "Because?"

"…For fun."

He stared at her and Elizabeth closed her eyes. She had known the words were stupid before they'd even left her mouth.

"Fun."

She nodded weakly. "Sure."

Hey, she was already in deep enough – why not open her mouth and remove all doubt that she was the stupidest girl alive?

Sonny leaned back with a heavy sigh. "Well, I hope you're at least being safe about it."

Her lips twisted to the side. "Yes, Sonny, I know all about that, thank you."

She might have imagined it, but she could have sworn that Sonny's cheeks turned pink. "I didn't mean _that_," he muttered, giving his head a brisk shake.

Elizabeth's eyes widened. Oh, God, he was _picturing_ them.

Sonny didn't look particularly thrilled about it either, and gave his head another shake. "I meant that I hope you're not getting too carried away with the _fun_ of it."

"…I don't know what you mean."

He closed his eyes and let out a short breath of air through his nose. No, she wouldn't. "Elizabeth, sweetheart, what is it exactly that you want from Jason?"

Sonny knew when her eyes widened and when two splotches of red bloomed on her cheeks that it had been the exact _wrong_ way to phrase the question.

"Do you even know?" he pressed on, hoping that she'd be as eager to forget the first part of the question as he suddenly was. "Because I know that you're just trying to live your life, but sweetheart, these…entanglements can get really complicated, really fast."

Elizabeth pressed her lips together. "You sound just like Nikolas."

"I'm just being honest with you," he said. "You think I like talking to you about this kind of stuff? I don't, but the situation's come up and I can't pawn it off on Alexis, so here we are."

She almost had to smile at his helpless rambling, but she had the distinct feeling he was about to say something really heavy.

"Look, I remember what it was like to be your age," Sonny admitted, his smile tinged with just a touch of exasperation. "To be young and free and in search of a good time, no strings attached."

Good God, of _all_ the things he never thought he'd say…

"You meet someone, and there's an instant attraction," he continued, his voice growing softer as his eyes grew distant. "You feel it immediately, but you don't really know what it is, or what to do with it. You just know that you have to see that person again. And each time you do, something inside of you grows. You start thinking of the next time you'll see her, and suddenly those times can't come fast enough. She's sharp, she keeps you on your toes, she surprises you, and the sex isn't bad, either. And you know where you stand with her, and you tell her where she stands with you, and you somehow fool yourself into thinking you can keep things the way they are: light, fun."

He shook his head slowly. "But you're delusional if you think that. Crazy if you think you can put things into compartments like that: _Work, Society, Bed_. It doesn't work like that. And then one day you wake up next to her and you found that whatever it was inside of you that grew when you were with her, you can't ignore it anymore. The last thing you expected was to feel that way – you tried to your best to pretend it wasn't even there. But it crept up on you, kept rolling and rolling along until it was _there_, and you just knew you couldn't live without her or what you felt for her. Even though you promised yourself you wouldn't do this…"

Elizabeth barely remembered to breathe as she stepped forward and gently put her hand to Sonny's cheek. His spine stiffened and he stared at her, surprised and haunted at the same time, and she stepped closer and threw her arms around his neck impulsively, holding him tightly.

"I know what I'm doing, Sonny," she said with a quiet resolve she had only just discovered. "You don't have to worry – I don't want you to worry. I know exactly what I'm doing. And I won't get hurt."

She'd make sure of that.


	30. Chapter 30

Previously – Spinelli and Sonny discover Jason and Elizabeth; Sonny talks with Jason and Elizabeth about their little liaison.

Hack | 30

"Whoa, whoa," Sonny cried the second he stepped back into the main room of his penthouse. "Jason, what are you – Aw, forget it. Hungry, sweetheart?"

Elizabeth sat down in her usual chair at his right and primly unfolded her napkin, watching Jason hold Spinelli pinned to the door with no small measure of satisfaction. "I'd like some coffee, please."

Spinelli gurgled something that Jason must have loosely translated as, _if you kill me you'll have to clean up the mess_, because the enforcer let him go and stepped back as he fell back to the floor. Spinelli straightened his shirt, wheezing slightly, and followed his mentor to the table like a dog with its tail tucked between his legs.

The two men sat down and finally served themselves, and Jason watched Spinelli suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. When the boy began to cut his pancakes with no intention of looking up at his arch-nemesis, Jason reached out and biffed him across the back of the head.

Spinelli squawked, his lips settling into a peeved line when Jason tilted his head toward Elizabeth. With a slow, deliberate sigh, he set his hands back down on the table and looked directly ahead at her.

"You are superior to me in every way."

Elizabeth's jaw dropped, and delight tugged up the corners of her mouth. She beamed at Jason, who just shrugged and gave her a little smirk before turning his attention back to his breakfast. Sonny shook his head wearily and looked down at his own plate.

"Forgot the juice," he muttered to himself. "I'll be right back."

Spinelli, who was by now simmering with resentment, glared at Jason and Elizabeth before pushing himself out of his seat and following Sonny.

"Mister Corinthos Sir-"

The mobster looked over his shoulder as he twisted the cap off his bottle of orange juice. "Oh, hey, Spinelli, you want some juice?"

"No, I don't want some juice," the boy fairly yelled. "I want to know what the hell that was in there!"

"What are you talking about?"

"I was counting on you, Mister Corinthos Sir," he got out, running his hands through his hair in a very agitated manner. "And you threw me to the wolves. Or, the Stone Cold and the Dragon, actually."

Sonny arched a brow at him. "What do you mean?"

"I was counting on you to tell them to knock it off, that they can't be together," Spinelli explained impatiently. "That their alliance was ungodly and unnecessary and against everything good and decent in this world! And that you wouldn't stand for it!

"But what did you do?" He let out a jittery laugh, as if unable to believe the words that came next. "You practically gave them your blessing! You said fuzzy things and waxed poetic about how you think they'll be together for a long time and make it through everything-"

"I don't think they're going to make it," Sonny cut in grimly.

Spinelli stopped, his mouth still open. "…What?"

The mobster took a gulp of his orange juice and set the glass down. "I don't think they're going to work."

The boy watched him for a long moment and after what seemed like an eternity, edged closer. "What are you saying? You don't like them together?"

"Not really."

"Then why didn't you say anything?!"

"Because it wouldn't have gotten me anywhere," Sonny shrugged. "Neither one would have listened to me, and they both would have been angry with me."

"So you told them you were fine with it?"

"I didn't say that – I told them what I thought and what I expected in regards to Elizabeth's safety. What more did you expect me to say? I can't run their lives."

"Well, you've been doing an excellent job fooling me so far."

Sonny looked at Spinelli with a decided lack of indulgence. "Look, I keep Elizabeth on a short enough leash already. I know that. Because of me, she has to do things a certain way, she has to eat things prepared a certain way, she has to look a certain way – how much can I get away with? I'm a man that realizes his limits."

"And so you have to also realize that your enforcer's knocking boots with your princess."

No sooner were the words out of Spinelli's mouth than he gulped, knowing that the Benevolent Mister Corinthos Sir would not remain so for long if he kept goading him.

"I know that, but they're both adults and there's nothing I can reasonably do about it." Sonny let out a heavy sigh and took a big gulp of his juice. "I just hope I'm wrong."

"Wrong about what?" Spinelli couldn't resist asking.

Sonny pinched the bridge of his nose and turned around. "One or the other is going to get hurt really badly here. And we'll both be caught in the middle."

It was the same thing Spinelli had thought, but he was curious to hear his hopeful employer's reasoning for it.

"What makes you think that either Stone Cold or the Dragon will get hurt?"

The mobster remained silent for such a long time that Spinelli began to seriously question his right to ask that question. And just when he was going to open his mouth to apologize and beg Mister Corinthos Sir to forget it, Sonny cleared his throat.

"Because they're both being so damn stupid about this."

Spinelli blinked. Well, really, even _he_ could have said that much.

"What was your first impression of Elizabeth, Spinelli?"

Oh, come on. This had to be a trick question.

"Uh, the Jackal thought that she was the goddess of sweetness and light."

The corner of Sonny's mouth twitched, either from amusement or annoyance. "You can be honest, Spinelli. I'm aware of her…singular personality."

The boy let out a heavy breath and with it, all the (polite) words he could ever use to describe his fire-breathing Dragon. "I thought she was a spoiled, domineering, stuck up, holier-than-thou little princess with a stick wedged so high up her butt she might as well have been a Popsicle."

Okay, well, some of those words weren't polite.

Sonny let out a sigh. "And Jason pretty much thought the same, I can tell you that much. Elizabeth is very…"

"Spoiled? Domineering? Stuck up? Holier than-"

"_Young_," Sonny cut in with a lethal glare that let the boy know that enough was enough. "She's very young. Just a kid, really. She might be twenty-one on paper, but she's still just six years old."

"Just like Stone Cold is nine and a half years old."

"Still a big age difference," Sonny murmured, almost to himself. "When I think of all that Jason learned in three years, and all that Elizabeth still has to learn…"

He trailed off and shook his head, silently awed by the power of the human mind. "They're very different, you know."

The corner of Spinelli's mouth quirked up, and he folded his arms on the island. "I don't know, I can see how they're both very similar, too."

The mobster seemed to appreciate the insight of that comment, but it didn't deter him from his point. "Tell me about your time spent with Jason, Spinelli."

A casual acquaintance would have assumed that Sonny was trying to change the subject, but Spinelli had a distinct feeling this would all tie up somewhere. "Well…I guess the only thing I can say is that Stone Cold really took care of me."

He swallowed convulsively and continued. "I'd gone pretty much my whole life with no one giving a damn about me, just because my dad ran off and left my mom before she had me, and because she was poor and died when I was really little. I always knew that everyone wished I was invisible, so they wouldn't have to deal with me or acknowledge me or feel sorry for me. And then one day in Rome changed all that."

The boy shrugged, not seeing the quiet intensity with which he was being watched. "I was in the right place at the right time, finally. After fifteen years of being the wrong person in the wrong place _every_ time, I was finally the guy that was in the right place at the right time. I didn't even know what I was doing – I just heard gunshots and saw this guy running and these other men chasing him and I knew I had to help. And after I knocked one of them out with Princess Peach and the guy – Stone Cold – knocked out the other two, I thought for sure that I was going to get yelled at or beat up or turned over to the cops or something, and I was thinking, _what the hell did I have to go get involved for?_"

He shook his head with a small smile. "But Stone Cold wasn't like that. He actually thanked me before he started yelling about me risking my life for some stranger that could have easily turned around and killed me. And then when he let me follow him around instead of just dumping me on one of his associates…I don't know, he really took care of me."

"How do you mean?"

The boy shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. Obviously, he kept me safe from the men that were after him and wanted to hurt him. If we were in a dangerous town at night, he made me sleep while he kept watch. If we were on the run, he risked his safety to make sure that I was able to keep up with him. If we didn't have enough food, he pretended like he'd already eaten and gave me the last of whatever we had. And when I got hurt, he took care of me and took things slow so that I could heal and so I wouldn't get tired. And even though we didn't really talk that much – I mean, really talk, like the way you and the Dragon seem to – I didn't mind because I knew that Stone Cold spoke with his actions instead of his words."

Spinelli shrugged again, looking adorably sheepish as he tried to recount his mentor's compassion without sounding like a total sap. "I don't know, he's like a big brother to me…or whatever."

Sonny tilted his head to the side. "Yeah, that's what I thought."

"If you don't mind my asking, Mister Corinthos Sir…why did you ask?"

"Because I wanted you to confirm what I was already suspicious about."

No one could answer a question without giving away any information quite like Sonny Corinthos. "Which was?"

"Jason is much older than Elizabeth…"

Spinelli resisted the urge to point out that he'd already said that.

"…and he wants something different than what she wants."

Oh, boy, he was going to regret asking this. "What does she want?"

Sonny shrugged. "In her words, fun." He glanced up when Spinelli snorted. "You know what I mean – what she means. She's a very sociable girl, Elizabeth is. When she makes friends, they're _real _friends. It takes her a while to get comfortable with people but when she does, and when she knows that they're together for the long haul, she does whatever she has to in order to keep those people safe and happy. You really couldn't ask for a better person to be on your side."

"I wouldn't know," Spinelli muttered glumly under his breath.

Sonny didn't hear him. "And I think that with Jason, she sees a good time. And I don't blame her, really. She's a young woman. She's supposed to be having fun and making mistakes and having life experiences and all that."

"So she wants to keep everything really cas', you mean."

"Huh?"

"Casual," the boy supplied. "Like, commitment-free."

Sonny nodded. "No strings attached, yeah. And that's normal for a girl her age, I guess. I'm just lucky that it started later, like when she was nineteen or twenty, instead of when she was sixteen or seventeen. She's not serious about Jason. And I think…"

He rubbed the back of his neck, and if Spinelli didn't know any better he would've sworn that the mobster looked guilty. "I think I may have scared her off being serious, too."

"What do you mean?"

"We were talking just now in the kitchen," he explained, absently waving a hand to indicate the room. "And it got away from me. I remembered…Never mind what I remembered, it was just that I started talking about starting out with what you thought was a fun, casual relationship and then one day waking up and finding out you're in love."

His eyes were solemn and guarded. "Elizabeth doesn't really believe in love. Did she ever tell you that?"

The boy shook his head slowly. "But to be fair, Mister Corinthos Sir, the Jackal is hardly the Dragon's confidante. She doesn't tell me much."

"She doesn't believe in love," Sonny repeated with a sigh. "And I can't say that if I was in her shoes, I would feel differently. Her mind and body have undergone so much trauma at such an early stage in her life…To be honest, it's a miracle that she can sit up in bed in the morning – the doctors never dreamed that she'd progress this far. She's a miracle, the way she is now."

Spinelli nodded politely. That wasn't quite the word he would have used, but his agreement seemed required.

"And if she doesn't believe in love, there's no way she'll let herself get serious about Jason, or anyone else." He winced, looking uncharacteristically regretful. "And I don't think I helped matters."

"What does this have to do with Stone Cold, though?" Spinelli wanted to know. "He's not about the whole wife in pearls and 2.5 kids and a dog behind a picket fence. He's not into getting serious anymore than she is."

Sonny's eyes snapped to his so fast that Spinelli almost felt dizzy. "Isn't he?"

Those two words, quiet and grave, practically made Spinelli's blood run cold.

"What? No!" he burst out, shocked and just a little angered that Stone Cold's best friend had managed to misread him so. "That's not at all what Stone Cold wants! He's the Lone Ranger – he rides alone on the straight and narrow, fighting the Evil Ones wherever they may lurk, and the last thing he wants is to tie himself down with…with entanglements of the heart, and put down roots. Stone Cold doesn't believe in roots! He cut himself off from all of his roots, and he picks up and leaves at the drop of a hat, and that kind of life doesn't exactly say, 'marry me and have my little Stone Cold ones,' not at all."

He shook his head, disgusted. "Stone Cold isn't looking for anything serious."

Sonny's expression hadn't changed. "Isn't he?"

"_Stop saying that!_"

The mobster pushed himself away from the counter and walked around the island, his hands jammed into his pockets. "Look, Spinelli, I have known Jason since he dropped his last name and became a Morgan. I watched him recover just like I watched Elizabeth recover. I watched him amaze all the doctors with the strides he made, and I watched him pick up and start a new life. There is no one on this planet that I admire more than Jason and Elizabeth for their tenacity and their sense of self and independence."

His steps were slow and deliberate, like those of a man all too familiar with his power. "I watched him come home beaten and bruised after picking bar fights at Jake's just because he felt like getting into trouble. I watched him whore around and get drunk and do whatever he wanted. I remember that time in his life: he was a wild one."

"He hasn't changed," Spinelli insisted, bristling when he received a pitying look from Sonny.

"It's like the difference between night and day," the mobster murmured. "Do you know when I noticed it?"

The boy flopped down on a kitchen stool and sulked. "Presumably after he and the Dragon began remote linking from different networks?"

The corner of Sonny's mouth twitched. "When he came home with you in tow."

Spinelli's eyes widened and his lips parted in surprise. When he opened his mouth to say something, not a single sound escaped. It was the first time, Sonny reflected, that he'd seen the boy rendered speechless. And it was kind of nice.

"He rode the elevator up with you and you were talking a mile a minute," Sonny recalled with a small smile. "He was only half-listening to you, and after we were done with introductions, he told you to go wash up and go straight to bed, not to play your music or your gameboy. Do you remember that?"

Spinelli shrugged awkwardly. "It was late that night. And he likes bossing me around."

"And he was so strict when he said that you couldn't join us for a drink," the mobster said, finding teasing the boy to be quite enjoyable. "And later, when he stopped in to talk to me about business and all the changes, I asked him to tell me about you."

Spinelli quirked a brow but remained silent.

"He had the strangest smile," Sonny remembered, "it was almost…_proud_. And the guy that I can't get two words from went on and on about his pal that he picked up in Italy."

There really weren't any words for that, not that Spinelli could have said anything had his life depended on it.

"You changed him, you know," Sonny informed him solemnly. "You may not realize it, but you did. And I don't think anyone has made more of an impact on Jason's life than you. Except maybe me," he added conspiratorially.

"I-I don't get what you're saying," Spinelli stammered. Did Stone Cold know that his best friend was _absolutely cracked_?

"I'm saying that you changed Jason more than you ever realized," the mobster said. And then he confirmed Spinelli's thoughts about his sanity: "It's because of you that Jason has decided that it might be time to get serious with someone. Start a life. A relationship. A family."

Michael "Sonny" Corinthos, Junior, godfather of the most powerful crime syndicate in the Tri-State area, was one-hundred-percent certifiably _insane_.

And he could apparently read minds, too, because the next words out of his mouth were, "Stop looking at me like I'm crazy."

"A family?" Spinelli got out, his voice no louder than a breath. "Sonny, you're not serious."

If he had noticed the boy calling him by his nickname, the mobster didn't address it. "Very serious. Jason's different, Spinelli. You might not realize it because you've been with him every day for the last four years. But I haven't seen my best friend in the past _six_ years. Not at all. And when he came home and stepped out onto the fifteenth floor for the first time in _six goddamn years_, I could tell right away that he was different, that something had changed."

Sonny shrugged and continued pacing around the island. "I see it in everything he does. I see it in the way he talks to you and Elizabeth, I see it in the kinds of things he says, I see it in the way he looks at her. He's grown up now. Not to say that he doesn't still enjoy drinking and riding and playing pool and whoring around, but he doesn't do it as much anymore. He used to _live_ at Jake's before; he had a different woman in his bed every single night. He'd ride his bike out of here at a moment's notice and not come back for a couple days. Did it all the time.

"He might not say anything, but I know the signs. I went through that whole phase myself." Sonny shook his head, not wanting to go back to that time in his life for the second time that morning. "Imagining that just for once, he might be worthy of something more. Thinking – _what if?_"

He shrugged again. "Dreaming a little. Even if you know you're going to wake up, it's still a nice dream while it's yours."

Spinelli was watching him with the oddest expression on his face. He looked part wistful, part nauseous. "…As his best friend, do you _really _think he wants something more with Elizabeth?"

Sonny's gaze was honest and clear when it met the boy's. "Yes, I do."

"…Do you think _he_ knows it?"

His eyes twinkled with amusement at the boy's insight, and Sonny shook his head. "No, I don't."

Spinelli nodded and pulled back a little. "And that's why one of them is going to get hurt."

"I hope to God I'm wrong."

And when Spinelli lifted his eyes once more, Sonny found that he could not doubt the sincerity he found there. "Yeah, I hope you are, too."


	31. Chapter 31

Previously – Spinelli and Sonny discuss the latest events in the soap opera that is Jason and Elizabeth's romance.

**Note – **Fun fluff! :D Yay! Also, this chapter ran long so I cut it up and separated it into 31 and 32. Whatev.

I'm still writing this without an outline and surprisingly enough, I'm not totally terrified. Whoo! Look, Ma, no hands!

*crashes*

*cries*

Such is the life.

Hack | 31 (PG-13)

"So?"

She kissed along his jawline as Jason frantically tried to unwind the ridiculous wrap-around sweater shrug she had on. "So, what?"

He grunted when he was finally able to pull it loose, and then fairly ripped it off of her as she reached for his belt, having already whisked his shirt off. "Is the sex any less good now that everyone knows about it?"

Elizabeth pulled back and looked at him, the corner of her mouth pulling upwards in what had to be the most wicked expression to ever grace a human face. "I don't know, I guess we'll have to find out."

Jason grinned and brought his hands to her cheeks, kissing her fiercely. He had no idea how the woman did it, but she made him _burn_ for her. One tilt of her head, one little crick of her finger, one sultry smile, and he was ready to follow her anywhere.

It would have been quite emasculating if he didn't have so much fun with her once they were finally alone.

Once they were finally alone…oh, he could get her to do anything he wanted. Hell, he could even get her to _say_ anything he wanted. It was something he'd used many times to his advantage, and sometimes to his amusement.

Elizabeth lifted her arms over her head and wriggled a bit, helping him strip off her little white t-shirt. She wasn't wearing a bra underneath, and Jason's rough palms instantly molded to her breasts. He kneaded her roughly, rolling her nipple into a tight little nub as he nudged her chin with his nose, easing her head back so that he could have greater access to her neck. Elizabeth, meanwhile, set to work on her pants and quickly undid the buttons and slid out of her pale brown slacks.

She pulled away from Jason long enough to slide them off her legs and threw them aside, then reached for him again. Clad only in a pair of white cotton bikini briefs, Elizabeth rocked her weight forward and, because they were both kneeling on the bed, managed to catch him off guard. Jason toppled backwards, falling to her mattress as she came with him.

Elizabeth neatly straddled him before he could do anything about it and kept his legs in place between her thighs. Using her position to her advantage, the brunette made quick work of his buttons and zipper and was soon easing his jeans down his hips.

Jason snarled and thrashed his legs, trying to unseat her, and he managed to pull her down to the bed and would have pinned her solidly underneath him had Elizabeth not chosen that exact moment to touch him through his boxers.

He closed his eyes when he felt her warm fingers stroke the length of him, shuddering at the intimate contact. She had no idea what she did to him when she touched him like that, with such sweet innocence and curiosity. He suspected that it amused her, how he always shuddered and trembled and cursed and writhed when she ran her fingertips up and down his length. He suspected more than anything that she loved the power it gave her.

Elizabeth gasped when his hand closed around her wrist with more force than Jason would have perhaps liked, but really, if she kept that up he'd inevitably explode in her hands and embarrass himself while amusing her.

"Jason?"

He caught her other wrist easily and pinned both her hands above her head with one of his. "You can't keep doing that to me, honey."

Trapped now, Elizabeth began to wiggle helplessly. "Jason?"

He didn't reply; there was nothing he could have said. Instead, Jason dipped his head down and caught her lips with his, taking advantage of her parted lips to slip his tongue into her mouth. He could feel her hips start to rise off the bed as he explored her mouth, tickling the roof of it with his tongue, and Elizabeth began to pant.

There was something _so_ unbelievably arousing about being able to both hear her breath and feel it, and Jason shook off the heady rush and held her down firmly. The little minx lifted her hips, still hoping that she might somehow escape and end up back on top, and rocked herself against him.

Without removing his mouth from hers, Jason skimmed his hand all the way down her side from her throat to her hip, just to torture her. Sure enough, the movement of his rough palm across her silky skin made the brunette writhe, and Jason rode her squirms until she quieted under him.

Elizabeth bit her lip as he ran one finger along the edge of her briefs. His finger set off currents of electricity that raced under her skin and made the air fairly crackle with intensity and sexual charge. She had no idea how he did it: every place the man touched instantly became warm and needy, desperate for his touch. He could get her in _so_ much trouble with a talent like that.

The fact that he often did wasn't something she cared to remember.

"I want these _off_," Jason growled, hooking his finger under the band. He eased the briefs down her hips, making sure to drag them slowly for added torture and anticipation, and only lifted himself off her for the scant seconds it took for her to kick them away.

Then he covered her again, not willing to allow her even that small freedom, and slowly traced one finger through her slick folds. Elizabeth gasped, then groaned, and arched her back off the bed. Her hips ground against his, bucking with such strength that she actually succeeded in lifting him a few inches off the bed.

He made gentle shushing sounds in her ear, pressing his hips to hers to get her to settle down again. He had never realized how strong she was for a woman her size – until he'd taken her to bed, of course. Then he realized a whole score of things about her that never ceased to amaze him.

"Tell me."

Elizabeth groaned his name when he ran his lips over the shell of her ear, and then cursed when he bit down hard on the lobe. She tried to throw him off and slip out from under him, but Jason kept her pinned down and moved his lips to her neck, sucking hard and branding her with his mark.

"Tell you what?" she asked breathlessly, amazed that his words had even registered in her foggy mind.

Jason ran his lips along the line of her jaw, his breath hot and moist and setting off fiery sensations in the too-sensitive skin there.

"Tell me you're _mine_."

Elizabeth gasped, then groaned, but not from his words. He had just dipped his tongue into the little hollow above her collarbone while simultaneously giving her breast a firm squeeze. "J-Jason…"

"Say it," he growled, his voice raspy and close to breaking with need.

"I…" She bit her lip and tossed her head from side to side, her breathing growing even more labored now.

Jason nuzzled her neck to distract her and used his other to explore her body, squeezing and kneading and pinching her wherever he felt like it. Elizabeth panted and squirmed, trying her best to ignore the fiery sensations he was setting off so that she might throw him off. But when he dipped his head and sucked the one spot behind her ear that drove her absolutely wild, Elizabeth had a feeling it was over.

He pulled his free hand away from her and reached under his pillow, but stilled when he remembered something.

"You haven't said it yet."

When she opened her eyes, he was pleased to see they were glazed and starry. "Said…what?"

Jason leaned down and nipped at her mouth, his patience growing thin as her hips ground against his. "Tell me you're _mine_."

Elizabeth's mouth opened on a silent gasp, but Jason held back until the torture was too much to bear. "I'm…I'm…Oh!"

She had glimpsed what he meant to secretly withdraw from under his pillow. "What are…No, Jason! No, no handcuffs!"

He brandished the glittering cuffs and rode her easily as she squirmed and bucked, a devious little grin tugging on his lips and making him look years younger. When she appeared to tire herself out, he leaned down and crushed his words to her mouth.

"Aw, honey, you're gonna have to do a hell of a lot better than that."

~*~*~*~*~*~

_The next morning, Sonny's penthouse, breakfast…_

"Stone Cold, why are you wearing a full-sleeved shirt?"

Jason glowered across the table at Spinelli and tugged the edge of his sleeves down farther. "Mind your own damn business."

"I'm just saying, you normally live in your t-shirts," he pointed out, spearing a piece of cantaloupe with his fork. "As you should, because we should all take advantage of these short New England summers. Gather our rosebuds while we may, so to speak."

"Don't speak."

"I'm just saying," he repeated defensively, "you _always _wear t-shirts."

"And today I'm not," Jason scowled as Elizabeth hid her smirk behind the rim of her Hello Kitty coffee mug. "Move on."

Spinelli let out a beleaguered sigh as Sonny finally assumed his seat at the head of the table and joined them. "Can I help it if I notice these things? The Jackal has a very keen eye for detail, Stone Cold. Take the Dragon, for instance. In fact, I wish someone would."

Elizabeth stuck her tongue out at him but remained otherwise silent. As far as Jason was concerned, she was already in enough trouble this morning thanks to her stunt the night before.

"She very rarely wears a scarf around her neck. When she does and it's meant casually, she knots it really low. All the other times that she wears it, she wears it high and tight around her throat." Spinelli waved his fork at his nemesis for added emphasis. "That's when she's trying to hide a hickey. A hickey that _you_ most likely gave her. And I don't condone that, Stone Cold, not for a second."

"Can we talk about something else?" Sonny interrupted loudly as Elizabeth self-consciously fingered the silk scarf she wore.

"We were talking about Stone Cold's t-shirts," Spinelli cut back in. "And how he always wears t-shirts, even when it's winter. And how today, he's not wearing a t-shirt."

"Will you just fucking drop it?"

The boy shrugged, not at all intimidated by his mentor's barking. Ever since Jason and Elizabeth had inadvertently made their relationship public by getting caught, er, red-handed, Spinelli had gained a bit of a spine when dealing with his beloved advisor. It was amusing to everyone except Jason.

"I'm just saying."

"Well, don't."

"But I was just saying."

"_Don't_."

"Jason, come on, he was just saying," Sonny added innocently, taking a gulp of his coffee when Jason turned on him with a murderous glare. "Can't fault him for that."

The enforcer sulked in his seat, grumbling obscenities under his breath, and Elizabeth suspiciously avoided eye contact.

"I don't know what has our normally chipper Stone Cold so upset this morning," Spinelli confided loudly to Sonny, even though the subject of his musings was sitting right across the table from him and looking perilously close to violence. "His mood is most dour."

"Mm," Sonny agreed, taking another sip of his coffee. "Dour."

Elizabeth desperately tried to hide her smile by taking another gulp of her coffee and keeping her mug to her lips. She had some small idea what had Jason in such a terrible funk.

It could possibly, _maybe_, have something to do with their little romp last night when he'd produced the handcuffs. Oh, he'd been in a _great_ mood when he pulled those damn things out from under his pillow. (His pillow on _her _bed.) He knew she hated it when he used those because then she had absolutely no chance; she was a prisoner to his every last desire, and he could have her weeping his name in mere minutes when he used those things.

And Elizabeth _hated_ weeping _anyone's_ name.

His great mood had drastically shifted for the worst, however, when he'd leaned in for a kiss and she'd wrapped her legs around his waist and effectively toppled him. After that, it was fairly easy to straddle him and bind _his_ hands to the headboard.

Ha.

And after having done that, she had triumphantly leered over him and asked him to describe every last wicked, sinful, naughty thing he wanted to do to her…and then she'd done it to _him_. Oh, he didn't like that one bit – after they had finished, of course. His masculine pride wouldn't have allowed him to be anywhere near as enthusiastic after they were done.

She giggled into her coffee, unable to help herself, and earned curious looks from Sonny and Spinelli. Jason, on the other hand, looked as if he wanted to strangle her. (And of all the things they'd experimented with in bed, she wasn't too keen to add asphyxiation to the list.)

"I need more coffee."

Sonny picked up the carafe from the little rack – it hardly made sense to make repeated trips into the kitchen every five minutes – and turned it so Jason could easily pick it up and pour however much he wanted.

When the enforcer reached over, however, he inadvertently tipped his hand…and his wrist.

"Stone Cold!" All amusement forgotten now, Spinelli looked genuinely concerned. "What happened to your hand?"

Jason let go of the carafe and would have quickly pulled his hand back had Sonny not grabbed his forearm and inspected the area just by his wrist. He tugged hard, but it was useless to retreat from Sonny when he was of the opinion that one of his friends might be hurt.

"They look like burns," he mumbled, turning Jason's wrist slightly as Spinelli looked on, open-mouthed. "Metal burns."

"Huh?"

"From handcuffs," Sonny explained hurriedly. "That's what we call them. Jason, were you cuffed recently?"

Spinelli's worried green eyes darted back and forth between the two men as Elizabeth remained suspiciously quiet. "Handcuffs? Seriously? Stone Cold, were the Men in Blue harassing you last night? Is that why you never made it back to the penthouse?"

His voice dropped to a scandalous whisper, and he leaned in over the table. "Were you in _lock-up_?"

"No," Jason barked, pulling his hand back abruptly and standing up from his seat. "I wasn't arrested and I wasn't in lock-up. The marks aren't from police handcuffs."

"Then what are they from?" Spinelli asked innocently.

Jason's blue eyes darted around the room. "I was, uh…it's a long story."

Elizabeth's lips twitched as the enforcer practically darted to the door, mumbling something about having to get to the warehouse before nine.

"Aw, Jason, you're gonna have to do a hell of a lot better than that."

He was almost fully out the door, but that remark had him poking his head back in and giving her such a ferocious glare that for a second, even Sonny was worried. And then, just when the mobster was about to put an end to the horrible staring match and defend his ward, he saw something flicker in Jason's eyes. Amusement. Mischief. Just a touch of admiration.

And then the enforcer stepped out, slamming the door behind him.

Spinelli crinkled his nose and looked at Elizabeth, then gagged. "We don't even _want_ to know, do we?"

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jason Morgan was getting _far_ too comfortable in her penthouse.

Elizabeth, who had been staring at the clock and watching it steadily tick on to 3:15 a.m., flopped over on her other side and glared at him. Hard.

Jason was currently asleep, looking very peaceful at that, while she had been tossing and turning and fervently trying to do the same for the past two hours. It was a cool night and she'd gotten out her lightest comforter, and the bedroom accessory had apparently been a big hit because Jason had been hogging it all night, even though he claimed it was still too warm for something like that.

Even now, he was rolled up in her camel-colored comforter as if burrowing into a cocoon. One foot stuck out, no doubt because he was warm, and his hand was jammed under his pillow (his pillow on _her_ bed, goddamnit) as he slumbered peacefully under the soft glow of the moon that filtered in through her filmy curtains.

And the idiot was _snoring._

And drooling.

On her pillow! Goddamnit!

Elizabeth growled low in her throat and skewered him with a fierce glare. It wasn't fair that a nerd like Jason got to sleep in _her_ bed and be warm and comfortable and peaceful and snoring and drooling while she had to stare at her clock and contemplate bashing a vase over her head just to get some down time.

Idiot.

And really, what had happened to those damn rules of theirs? She knew they established them for a reason. Particularly so that one of them could not take over the other's bedroom and keep them up the whole damn night. She should have said something the first night he slept over, but it was right after one of his really late nights at the warehouse and he'd brought her a late night snack and then she'd offered him dessert (wink, wink) and by the time they were done it was just too late to send him on home without running the very real risk of waking up Spinelli, who even in his often pot-addled post meridian stupor was very sensitive to noise in the corridor. And so Jason had slept over that night, and then the next night, and then the night a few nights after that, and then he'd slept over that one time even when they _hadn't_ done anything, and here he was now.

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed. Stupid rules. Stupid snoring. Stupid, stupid man.

And then she reached out and pinched him.

Not hard, just on the meaty flesh of his forearm. She grasped it between her finger and thumb, gave it a good squeeze, then quickly yanked her hand back and closed her eyes. And waited.

He snored on.

God damn!

Elizabeth let out a sigh and glanced over her shoulder at the clock. 3:35 a.m.

Wait a minute – 3:35 a.m.? Hadn't it just been 3:15? Had she honestly spent twenty minutes watching that buffoon drool and imitate a buzz saw? Unreal.

With a huff, Elizabeth yanked the comforter back over to her side, firmly tucked it in around her so he couldn't easily pull it back, and flopped over on her other side, facing away from him. And then she pulled her foot forward, aimed, and sent it flying back to land a good, solid kick on his shin.

As soon as she heard him let out a disgruntled _Oof_, Elizabeth closed her eyes and controlled her breathing. Behind her, she felt Jason shift and then prop himself up on his elbow and look around. At least the moron had stopped snoring. Let him stay up for a few hours now and see how _he _liked it!

She did her best to contain the small smile that tugged at her lips; knowing him, he'd probably see it and know that she purposely kicked him to wake him up. Thankfully, Jason settled back down in bed and let out a sigh, squirming until he was once again comfortable. A long silence, and then he sighed again.

Elizabeth smiled softly, her eyelids now genuinely heavy. Good. Let him toss and turn for a while.

She took in a deep breath through her nose and released it slowly, savoring the warmth of her bed and the still of the night. And just as she was certain that nothing would stop her from slipping off into dreamland, she felt something hot and strong latch around the small of her waist in a vice-like grip.

Elizabeth didn't even have the presence of mind to squeak as Jason's strong arm yanked her back until she was pressed up solidly against his naked chest. Before she could squirm away, his other arm slipped under her neck and wrapped around her chest, holding her close as Jason once again dropped his head onto the pillow – this time it was _her _pillow.

He let out a snuffling breath through his nose and shifted a bit, his arms tightening around her, then let out a soft sigh.

Elizabeth stared directly ahead of her at the wall, the tall red numbers of her digital alarm clock signaling 3:40 a.m. in the periphery.

And then the snoring started.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The idiot was breaking rules right and left.

He was currently in her bathroom using the spare toothbrush that she had intended for guests, should she ever have any that spent the night, and was talking about his _problems_. Through the toothpaste. And probably spewing it onto her lighted vanity mirror, too.

Idiot.

"-weeks, and I thought I had plenty of time but-" He stopped and spat. Then, instead of running the water to clean out the sink, he continued brushing. "-I don't. Sonny keeps telling me I should write these things, like, important dates-"

He spat again and continued brushing as Elizabeth, already clad in her cotton nightgown, burrowed under the comforter.

"-and stuff on a calendar or one of those man-diaries, but I don't like to do that."

She let out a sigh and pulled the comforter over her head. Really, would the sterling conversationalist ever let her get to sleep?

After what seemed like an eternity, he spat for the last time, ran the sink, rinsed his toothbrush, and then Elizabeth heard the telltale _clink_ of him dropping it into the brush caddy right next to hers. Finished, Jason turned off the bathroom light, took off his shirt and sent it sailing onto her little ottoman by the lounge chair, and slid into bed next to her.

Elizabeth let out a small sigh when he remained silent, and burrowed into her pillow. Ah, silence.

"And I guess I'm paying the price now, because his birthday is in two damn weeks and I have no idea what to get the stupid kid."

She groaned and clamped her hand to her ear. Dear God, not this again.

"And he's turning twenty, you know?" Jason let out a sigh and squirmed in the bed, trying to get comfortable. "I feel like the twentieth birthday should be kind of important. And I have no idea what to do – I mean, for my twentieth birthday, I got an extra jell-o cup, a sponge bath, and Edward brought a thick folder of ELQ stock options to my hospital room."

Elizabeth lifted her head, picked up her pillow, and then flopped down on the bed once more, holding it firmly to her exposed ear.

"And that's not going to fly with Spinelli," Jason continued, rolling onto his side and absently reaching out to pull her against him. "Whatever I get him, it has to be something good. Something he wants. Something he'll look back on."

Elizabeth grunted as she felt herself being dragged back over the sheets until she was neatly spooned against Jason's sturdy frame. His arm was wrapped under her breasts, and the hand of the other rested on the curve of her hip.

"I never got him anything for his other birthdays," the enforcer recalled. "We were almost always on the run. I mean, sure, I said 'happy birthday' to him and got him an extra apple or _shawarma _or panini, depending on where we were, but that was it. Now that we're both home…I kinda feel like he should get something good."

He let out a sigh and stroked her hip gently, and the feel of the cotton beneath his fingers caught his attention. "Hey. New nightgown?"

Elizabeth replaced her pillow with a grunt and squirmed in his grasp. "Yeah."

"It's nice. Soft." The corner of his mouth hooked up. "Short."

And just when Elizabeth realized that there might be another way to get him to shut up but good, Jason let out a groan and flopped onto his back, leaving her feeling oddly cold and alone.

"How am I supposed to get him a gift on such _short_ notice?"

The brunette gritted her teeth and reached for her pillow again, this time wondering if there was any way to stick it in one ear and out the other because God knew that Jason had already caused whatever was between her ears to turn into mush with his ramblings about that stupid nerd.

It was going to be a long night.


	32. Chapter 32

_Previously – Jason and Elizabeth have fun with handcuffs; Jason drools and snores; Jason talks about his problems in bed. The horror, the horror._

**Note – **Effing long chapter. :| And there was nothing I could do about it, either.

**Hack | 32**

"I can't tonight."

Jason glanced down at Elizabeth, who was currently sitting in his lap while he watched the end of the game, the part where the winning coach made some ridiculous, overblown speech that no one heard anyway. "Huh?"

"I can't tonight," she repeated firmly, trying to ignore the sensations he was stirring in her as he gently stroked her hair. God damn.

His fingers kept their smooth, lulling pace. "…I didn't ask you to do anything tonight."

"Well, I'm just saying," she covered hastily. "Time of the month. You know."

Jason nodded sagely. "Got it."

He made no move to leave.

Elizabeth licked her lips nervously. If she didn't put an end to his constant…_presence_ in her penthouse, things would get way too complicated. She didn't want to wake up one morning and realize that she was in love with him. She didn't want that at all.

And she fully intended to succeed where Sonny had failed.

"…So, goodnight. I'll see you at breakfast, I guess."

Jason frowned as she hopped up off the couch – and did so pretty fast for a woman who pleaded biological nuisance – and walked away. "Breakfast?"

"Yeah," Elizabeth nodded quickly. "See, I've been feeling all day like I'm coming down with something. It's the changing of the seasons, you know. We're getting an early fall this year. I'd just hate for you to catch whatever bug I have."

Realizing that he'd been given the direct cut, Jason slowly reached for the remote and flipped off the television. He waited a beat, as if expecting her to change her mind, and when she didn't he stood as well.

"Uh, okay. See you…at breakfast, then."

Elizabeth smiled and followed him as he headed for the door. "Yup. See you then."

He had no sooner stepped out into the hall than she gently shut the door behind him and leaned against it, letting out a relieved sigh.

So far, so good.

~*~*~*~*~*~

_The next night…_

Elizabeth held the door open and leaned against it as Spinelli let himself out and headed back to his own penthouse. "Later, nerd. Thanks for bringing over the pizza."

"Night, Dragon. Thanks for letting me crash for a while in your dark, forbidding lair."

She made a face at his retreating back. "How can it be dark and forbidding? I just had new window treatments done three days ago."

"Dark and forbidding!"

"Go die." She shook her head and looked over at Jason, who was finishing off the last of his beer and stacking the two empty pizza boxes one on top of the other. "Night, Jason."

He looked up, surprised, then tried to hide the fact that he was. "Uh…yeah. See you later."

Elizabeth waited patiently as he got up after fiddling with his empty bottle, and smiled when he made his way out into the hall. "See you tomorrow."

"Breakfast, right," he murmured, running a hand through his hair as he ambled over to his own penthouse. "See you."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Well, this was no good.

Elizabeth glared at the clock and hopelessly willed herself to fall asleep. 3:15 a.m. Normally at this time, she'd be elbowing Jason in the ribs to quit snoring so loud and holding her so damn tight. And tonight, she was…bah. She was back to staring at the clock, just as she had the night before.

Sure, the first few hours had been great. She'd slept like a log since the moment her head hit the pillow, and it was heaven.

Until 3:15 a.m.

And that was when she woke up, unwilling to acknowledge the fact that she missed Jason's arms around her and his noisy breath rustling through her hair.

God damn!

It wasn't supposed to be this way. She had always needed peace and quiet to sleep. That was why she sometimes made Nikolas sleep in his master bedroom alone after they had fooled around while she commandeered a guest room. Granted, that was only on really bad nights, but still. Sometimes she just needed total silence in order to fall asleep.

And now that she had it, she was hoping to hear the familiar sound of a buzz saw, or something like it.

_God damn_.

She flopped over on her back, idly rubbing the silk of her nightgown between her thumb and forefinger as she stared at the ceiling. She had no idea why she was still wearing it. After all, she'd only gotten it because she thought Jason would like it. She'd read somewhere that men liked women in soft fabrics like rayon and silk and angora. And Jason sure had enjoyed the nightgown – even more than she did, and she actually liked it a whole lot.

The seconds ticked by, and then the minutes ticked by, and Elizabeth still couldn't get to sleep.

And maybe it was the insomnia, or maybe it was her frustration, or maybe it was just _her_, but as she lay there awake in her too-large bed hoping to fall asleep, she began to think that the whole situation was just so stupid.

After all, she was lying there awake, wasn't she? And if Jason was with her, his light snoring and heavy breathing would have lulled her to sleep, right? They only had problems when he got too loud, but she could usually handle that with an elbow to the ribs or a swift kick to the shins. Other than that, they were fine. She actually _liked_ some of the noises he made while sleeping.

And if he wasn't sleeping in the same room with her, it followed that he wasn't doing any sleeping with her, either. And she rather liked sleeping with Jason. So, really, why should she punish herself out of fear of something that she could probably safeguard herself against anyway?

Okay, then it was settled.

She'd put an end to this stupidity. No sense in driving herself crazy over it, after all.

Good. So it was settled.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"So I'll see you tomorrow…at breakfast."

Elizabeth reached out and grabbed Jason's elbow before he was fully out the door. "Ah, actually, I was, uh…"

He turned back to her, cautious amusement playing in his expressive eyes. "What?"

"Well, you know, I was thinking…"

"Let me guess," he smirked, "you've gotten over that bug."

She knew he was making fun of her, but she let it go. "Yeah. I'm all better now."

The enforcer leaned against the doorway and regarded her lazily. "But I thought I snored too loud."

"Only sometimes."

"And I thought I hogged up the bed."

"I'm little – I don't need that much room, anyway."

His smile grew, slow and hot and _so_ confident that she would have smacked him if he wasn't looking so damn cute. "I thought you wanted your peace and quiet."

Elizabeth grinned and fisted his t-shirt, pulling him to her so abruptly that Jason actually stumbled right before his lips met hers.

"I'd rather have you instead."

~*~*~*~*~*~

"_Happy birthday, stupid neeeeeeeeerd…"_

Sonny glared at his unapologetic ward. "Elizabeth…"

"_Happy birthday to yoooooooou."_

Spinelli tried not to show how much he appreciated the gesture and instead turned on Elizabeth. "Hey, it's my birthday," he asserted, poking her in the shoulder. "You said you'd be nice to me today."

"No, I said I wouldn't hit you today."

"Oh." He scratched his head. "Actually, that makes more sense."

Sonny smiled and hoisted himself out of Jason's comfortable armchair. "Okay, so how about we open those presents now?"

Spinelli's eyes widened. "There are presents? Really?"

"Let's do it after dinner," Jason spoke out uneasily. Two weeks had passed and he still hadn't gotten the damn kid a damn gift. He kept putting it off, telling himself that he'd see the perfect gift and just _know_, and now Spinelli's birthday was here and he had nothing.

He would just tell him that he hadn't gotten him anything. That's what he would do. Spinelli would understand. Spinelli wouldn't care. It wasn't like he had father-issues or anything…

Ah, shit.

He was screwed.

"Let's do it after dinner," he repeated, rubbing his clammy palms together as Elizabeth hopped up and followed Sonny to the Penthouse II coat closet, where they had both stored their presents.

"Come on, Jason, now's the perfect time," Sonny told him, holding the door open so that Elizabeth could pull out the boxes. "We'll do the gift thing, and then we'll eat. And then the kids can go do whatever they want, and we'll come home and go to bed."

"I was thinking we could order in pizza," Spinelli said, trying to see what his hopeful employer and his fearsome Dragon were holding. "You know, Luna Mezzo Mare just added stuffed crust spinach pizza to their menu and-"

To his surprise, Elizabeth and Sonny both turned around and glared at him. "No."

Spinelli blinked. "What do you mean, no?"

The brunette's lips settled into a thin line as Sonny hauled out the largest box. "We mean, no. We're eating whatever Sonny's made, and that's that. No ordering out."

Spinelli snapped his mouth shut, a little put off at having been ordered around so rudely on his birthday, but chose not to say anything. After all, it looked as if the Dragon and Mister Corinthos Sir had gotten him gifts, and he honestly had not been expecting anything of the kind.

"Here's mine," Sonny announced, pushing the large box into the center of the room where the boy sat. Jason watched uneasily from a distance, and slowly made his way over to the couch and sat down next to Elizabeth at his friend's request. It was upon doing so that his sights fell on _her_ box, which was large and had been tied with a pretty bow. God damn.

"You didn't have to get me anything, Mister Corinthos Sir," Spinelli said as he excitedly tore open the wrapping paper. He'd never gotten anything wrapped in real, shiny, honest-to-goodness wrapping paper before. "Honestly. The Jackal wasn't expecting – Oh, my gosh, it's a scooter!"

"A segueway," Sonny corrected. "Top of the line, too. Elizabeth tells me it's 'primo nerd transportation,' and I believed her mainly because I didn't know what she was saying, but it sounded good."

"A segueway," Spinelli cheered, looking over at his beloved mentor. "Look, Stone Cold, I have a segueway!"

"It's nice," Jason croaked, trying to settle down and relax as Elizabeth pulled her legs up and leaned back against him. "Thank Sonny."

"Thank you, Mister Corinthos Sir," the boy replied dutifully, getting up to give the mobster a quick hug. Sonny looked surprised, but he hid it well and awkwardly clapped him on the back.

"Happy twentieth, Spinelli."

Gosh, Spinelli was already twenty. And Elizabeth would be twenty-two soon. The kids were growing up so damn fast, it was enough to make a guy feel ancient.

"This is from me," Elizabeth announced, picking up her box and setting it on Spinelli's lap. The boy's eyes lit up, but before he could open it, she surprised him by reaching under the coffee table for another box.

"This is also from me."

Spinelli's jaw dropped, and just as he was about to croak out his thanks, Elizabeth twisted the knife deeper in Jason's gut by pulling out yet another box, though a slimmer one. "And this is also from me."

Spinelli gaped at the three gifts clustered around him. "I…Wow, Dragon, the Jackal has no idea what to…Wow."

"Just open it, nerd," she groused, leaning back against Jason's chest. "Before we all grow beards."

Never one to argue with that logic, Spinelli went to work on the medium-sized gift. "Wolverine wrapping paper – what will they make next?"

"Spiderman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wrapping paper," Elizabeth smirked, gesturing to the other two boxes that were wrapped accordingly.

Spinelli laughed and tore off the last of the paper. "Oh – it's a George Foreman grill!"

Jason let out a bark of laughter but quickly covered it with a cough when he saw Sonny frown.

"Elizabeth, you got him a George Foreman grill?" The mobster stared at his unrepentant ward, his expression partly disbelieving and partly disappointed. "Why would you do that? What kind of a gift is that?"

"Open the other one, Spinelli," she instructed slyly. "Let's give Sonny a coronary while we're at it."

The mobster tapped his nails on the armrest as the boy attacked the largest package, fairly tearing off the wrapping paper and throwing it haphazardly over his shoulder. "Wow – it's a slow cooker! A crock pot! What a fun word."

Elizabeth smirked when Sonny glared at her. "Now the last one – the thin one."

Spinelli grinned and reached for the one she handed him. It took him a few seconds to get the paper off, and then he pulled it open. "Cookbooks with crock pot and grill recipes. Hey, thanks."

She shrugged modestly. "You struck me as the kind of guy that liked good food but didn't really want to spend a lot of time or fuss making it. I figured the crock pot and the grill were good options for you – you can do basically all your cooking on them, easy. And the books have some really good recipes. This way, you can make whatever you want, when you want. And you don't have to depend on Jason to feed you, like he never does."

Spinelli laughed and stacked the gifts one on top of the other, and then to Sonny and Jason's surprise, leaned over and kissed Elizabeth on the cheek. "Thanks."

She shrugged again and reached for her purse. "Oh, before I forget-"

"Don't tell me you got him something else," Jason groaned. It was just like her to figure that he was having a hard time getting Spinelli a gift and then to go out and get him four.

"No, just his card," she returned lightly, pulling out an envelope and a thin white box. "Here's your card, nerd. Jason and I both signed it. Oh, and here's Jason's gift. I picked it up by mistake."

That was news to him.

Jason snapped to attention when she handed Spinelli the box. He didn't remember getting that box. What was he saying? Of course he didn't get him that box! Hell, he didn't get him anything! That was what his whole dilemma was all about. And that could only mean…

"From you, Stone Cold?" Spinelli nibbled on his lower lip, a habit he'd most likely picked up from Elizabeth, and cautiously took the box. Unlike the other gifts, there was no fancy wrapping paper and no bow on top. It was just a simple white box.

He opened it carefully, almost reverently, and everyone leaned forward to see what was in it. Especially Jason – he was the most curious, after all.

"Wow," Spinelli breathed, his wide eyes unerringly focused on the gift. "I don't believe it."

"What is it?" Sonny wanted to know. "It looks like an ID card."

The boy lifted the plastic with fingers that almost trembled. "It's a five-year all-access pass to the Tech Convention! They even sent me a VIP ID badge with my picture on it! And it's a _good_ picture!"

"Hey, that's pretty great," Sonny smiled. He paused, the grin slipping, and looked up at Elizabeth for approval. "That _is_ pretty great, right?"

She nodded. "Oh, yes. It's a very big deal."

"Hey, that's great," Sonny repeated with a wider smile. "VIP and everything."

"There's something else in the box," Elizabeth pointed out, scooting forward on the couch. "Pick it up – I wanna see."

Spinelli put down the pass and gingerly lifted up a silver chain sporting a flat rectangular pennant. "Cool! It's a dog tag!"

Sonny's brows furrowed. "But you don't have a dog."

"It's not for actual dogs," Spinelli hurriedly explained, his fingers making quick work of the clasp. "It's like a dog tag that you wear. You can have whatever you want engraved on it, and it's long and generally hangs a little low, and it's the coolest thing."

"What does yours have engraved on it?" Elizabeth wanted to know.

"Uh, let's see." He licked his lips and began to read. "_Damien Benvenuto Spinelli. The Jackal-"_

Elizabeth burst out laughing. "Your middle name is Benvenuto? Seriously?"

Spinelli's lips thinned. "Cram it, Imogene."

The brunette's jaw dropped. "How did you know that?"

"It's what Mister Corinthos Sir yelled when we were getting high and watching our fingers fing." He shook his head and continued to inspect the tag. "And it's got my birthday numerals, and then it says _Port Charles, New York, 2007_._ Benvenuto._ That's my middle name again," he added unnecessarily. "It's also Italian for 'welcome.'"

"Aw," Elizabeth sighed, "that's so sweet. Jason, you big softy."

The softy in question grunted when she elbowed him in the stomach. "Yeah, well…"

"This is the greatest gift I've ever gotten," Spinelli said softly, his eyes shining with admiration for his beloved mentor. "Thank you, Stone Cold."

Jason tugged on his ear, a little uncomfortable with the raw adoration. "You're, uh, welcome."

"I hate to break into this," Sonny started regretfully as he rose from his seat, "but if we don't get over to my place now, our dinner's gonna get cold. What do you say?"

"Lead the way, Mister Corinthos Sir," Spinelli said, bounding off the couch and following his hopeful employer. "The Jackal is most famished. Hey, how does it look?"

Sonny turned around and studied the boy, who had by now donned his new dog tag. "It's very nice. Better than those girly hemp necklaces you always wear."

"How many times do I have to tell you – they're _unisex_! Unisex!"

Elizabeth laughed as she watched the two men disappear into the hallway, and she would have gotten up and followed them had Jason not snaked his arm around her, under her breasts, and held her fast.

"Hey."

"Oof," she grunted, squirming in his hold. "Let go. What's the matter with you?"

"I guess I'm just a softy," he smirked, turning around so that she was facing him and halfway in his lap. "You got Spinelli all that stuff?"

She shrugged. "It wasn't any big deal. From what I assumed, the nerd's never had a real birthday with real presents and a real cake and stuff. And I guess even the stupid dip deserves to be spoiled one day out of the year."

Jason's eyes softened as a small smile played on his lips. God, she just amazed him. "Thank you."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes at his awed words and would have laughed them off had he not silenced her.

"You knew I was going crazy trying to think of something for him, and you took care of it," Jason continued quietly. "Did you see him? He was so happy." His lashes fluttered as his gaze swept slowly over her entire face. "It's all because of you. Thank you."

Elizabeth's heart quickened in her chest when Jason used his gentle hold on her neck to pull her down into what she knew would be a soft, soulful, absolutely liquefying kiss. But she couldn't let him do it.

His eyes shot open in surprise when she pressed a finger to his lips, which were now just a scant distance from hers.

"Hold that thought, Lover-Boy," she winked, wiggling out of his hold. "Because the Dragon is just as famished as the Jackal. Now come on, let's eat."

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Another soda, nerd?"

The boy shook his head and held his stomach as Jason lined up the next shot. "No, thank you. I'm still stuffed from Mister Corinthos Sir's most excellent dinner. No wonder you didn't want me ordering out – you prepared a feast in one afternoon! I can't believe that you remembered I loved the food in Spain."

Sonny shrugged and took a pull from his bottle. "You mentioned it once, so I thought I'd go with the tapas and paellas you probably had while you were there. Elizabeth and I put together a quick menu – the shrimp rice, the salmon curado, the mozzarella-and-mangoes quesadillas, the octopus, all that stuff – and I threw it together. It was pretty good, too. We should have Spanish cuisine more often."

Elizabeth, who had just meant to take a simple drink order, shrugged and turned on her heel. "I'm going to get another beer. Be right back."

"Your shot, Spinelli," Jason mumbled, frowning at the balls that were scattered across the table. For some reason, his game was off tonight. He wasn't normally this bad…or this distracted. And of course, just like the last time he'd been at Jake's and found himself distracted during a pool game, the reason for his woes was currently at the bar asking Coleman for another beer.

Spinelli, oblivious to his mentor's jitteriness, set about lining up his shot. His brand new dog tag, engraved to perfection as far as he was concerned, slipped out from under his shirt and he straightened, slipping it back under before once again lining up his shot.

"Pardon the Jackal for saying so, Stone Cold, but you're off your game tonight." He bit his lip and pumped a fist in the air when the intended balls careened into the intended pockets. "Normally, the Jackal can pretty much count on you clearing almost the whole table before relinquishing your turn."

Jason grunted in reply, earning a curious look from Sonny, but said nothing. Spinelli sank another two stripes and circled the table like a shark, obviously not expecting anything further in way of an answer.

Elizabeth, who had been engaged in conversation with Coleman this whole time, skipped back over and slid her hand into Spinelli's arm. "Hey, nerd, I'm bored with pool – let's go play darts instead."

Spinelli glanced up at the other side of the room where the dartboard was tacked up by the jukebox. "But there are only two of us. And we don't have an 8x10 of anyone with us."

Sonny's brows furrowed. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Both Elizabeth and Spinelli ignored him.

"So what?" she shrugged, relieving him of his cue and pulling him away from the tables. "We'll make up a new game. It'll be fun, come on."

Spinelli shrugged and trotted over with her, and the two managed to claim the dartboard before another small group of regulars could. This left Sonny and Jason on their own by the pool tables, and neither man minded this so much.

Jason moved around the table and pulled out all the balls from the pockets, then set to work racking them up. Sonny just leaned on his cue, using it like a staff, and sipped his beer as he watched his best friend.

Once the balls were racked, Jason was ready to break. He lined up his shot carefully, slammed his cue masterfully into the white ball, and watched in veiled dismay as the colorful balls scattered.

"Spinelli's right," Sonny murmured into the neck of his bottle. "Your game's off."

Again, Jason just grunted.

It was just too bad for him that Sonny's attention span was greater than that of a teenage computer geek. "Any particular reason for that?"

That earned him a mild glare, which was surprising. A month or so ago, such a question would have gotten Sonny a fierce glower and scathing retort; as it was now, the remark seemed to roll off of Jason's back and he only somewhat glared to keep up appearances. Which meant, of course, that the enforcer wasn't anywhere near as irritated as he might otherwise have been.

Which, in addition to confusing, was perplexing.

"You've been a little distracted tonight," Sonny ventured. "Ever since we started dinner. I didn't wanna say anything, but…Look, are you sure you're okay? What's going on?"

Jason let out a sigh and analyzed the balls on the table, his eyes darting back and forth but never once lifting to meet Sonny's concerned gaze. "I didn't get Spinelli a birthday gift."

Sonny scoffed. "What are you talking about? You got him a great gift. He wouldn't shut up about it – all through dinner, it was _thank you, Stone Cold, you're the best, Stone Cold. Stone Cold this, Stone Cold that."_

He frowned and shook his head. "Not one word about the segueway."

"He loves the segueway," Jason replied on behalf of his young friend. "Told me that he was going to charge it tonight and use it tomorrow, if it wasn't raining. But that's not the point."

"What is the point?" Sonny asked gently. It was the kind of voice he would use and had used many times on Elizabeth, but he certainly never would have dreamed of being so patronizing with Jason. Once upon a time.

"I didn't get Spinelli a birthday gift," Jason repeated firmly.

"But the tickets and the dog tag-"

"Not from me."

The mobster arched a brow skeptically. "So who were they from? The Tooth Fairy? The HP Pavilion Pixie?"

Jason didn't appreciate his bland attempt at humor. "They were from Elizabeth," he admitted softly.

Sonny wasn't following. "But she got him that grill and those books and-"

He shook his head again. "She got him _all_ of it. The only thing she didn't get him was the segueway."

This information was baffling, and the mobster just stared at him. "Okay, I'm not following. You're going to have to explain that."

"For weeks now, I've been stressing about what to get Spinelli," Jason explained patiently. "I told her about it one night – about how I had no clue what to get him. She never said anything about it, and today I was just going to tell Spinelli that I didn't get him anything special, but then she handed him the gift box and said it was from me."

Sonny looked over to the other side of the room where Elizabeth had blind-folded Spinelli, who was holding a dart in his hand, with her necktie-belt and was spinning him around in circles in front of the dartboard. "…So Elizabeth got Spinelli those things. The VIP pass, the _Benvenuto _dog tag…"

Jason nodded earnestly. "Yeah. You see? She went out and did it all by herself – she found out his middle name and she engraved the thing and she even took a photo of him and sent it so that his pass could be laminated with it."

Sonny's eyes flicked back to Jason's as his best friend leaned on his cue and watched the younger couple, the oddest, smallest, truest smile playing on his lips.

"I can't believe she did all that for…Spinelli and me."

Okay, this was unreal.

And exactly what Sonny had been afraid of.

He cleared his throat awkwardly, hoping it would break Jason from his trance. "Jason, let me ask you something."

His best friend blinked. "Sure."

"I've been pretty reasonable about everything so far, right?" Sonny waved his hand in the air, a gesture of his that sometimes came up when he was a little nervous or uneasy. "About you and Elizabeth. I haven't said anything, I haven't done anything to make you uncomfortable, I've generally stayed out of it."

Jason nodded, a little confused. "Yeah, Sonny, what's the point?"

The mobster licked his lips, his hands folded over the blue tip of his cue. "Jason, are you sure that you and Elizabeth are on the same page here?"

He might have imagined it, but Sonny could have sworn that his best friend's eyes narrowed slightly.

"What do you mean?"

"Are you sure you want the same things right now?" he asked, a little more gently this time. "Have you talked about any of this with her? Seen where you both are coming from?"

A muscle in Jason's jaw began to tick. "I don't know what you're trying to get at."

"When Spinelli first saw you and Elizabeth, he was upset," Sonny stated, switching tactics just a little. "And he came to me later and demanded to know why _I_ wasn't more upset. He thought that I would take issue with my best friend getting involved with a girl almost young enough to be my daughter."

"Almost," Jason added under his breath.

Sonny ignored him. "We ended up talking about it, and I admitted to him that I didn't see how this relationship of yours was going to work."

Jason squared his jaw but, to his credit, remained silent. Sonny had very rarely steered him wrong, and he owed it to him to listen to what he was trying to say here before he ignored it and did what he wanted.

"You're both very important to me," Sonny sighed. "And when I first realized what was going on, I couldn't stop thinking about what would happen if things turned sour. You'd still have to be around each other all the time, and I didn't see how it was possibly a good idea for you two to get involved. But more than that…"

He paused and licked his lips. "Jason, I'm going to say this as honestly as I can. It's not my intention to tell you what to do, and it's not my intention to screw up a good thing for you. I'm just giving you my honest assessment of this."

Jason nodded almost imperceptibly.

"You and Elizabeth both want entirely different things," Sonny explained gently, in as kind a tone as he could manage. "She doesn't want what you want, Jason."

His lips parted in surprise. "I don't-"

"I think you do," Sonny murmured. "And I think you might be forgetting that Elizabeth is considerably younger than you, maybe a little too young for what you're thinking. Eight years, in fact. Twenty-one to twenty-nine."

"Six to nine-and-a-half," Jason muttered bitterly.

Sonny's eyes flashed. "You know what I mean. She's a young woman – she still is, very much so. And I…I don't want anyone to get hurt here."

The enforcer's eyes narrowed. "You think I'd do something to intentionally hurt her? What kind of person do you think I am?"

Sonny smiled sadly as Elizabeth and Spinelli let out a whoop in unison across the room. "I wasn't talking about intentional. And I wasn't talking about you doing the hurting, Jason."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Elizabeth had just gotten home and was pacing angrily by the dining table when her front door opened and Jason and Spinelli walked in. Jason appeared aggravated, and Spinelli was following him so closely that he occasionally nipped at his heels.

"Spinelli," the older man ground out, "How many times do I have to tell you? It's not _my_ fault that there's a civil war in Nigeria right now."

Of all the things he never thought he'd say…

The boy didn't look convinced. "But, Stone Cold-"

"You," Elizabeth growled, jabbing a finger at Spinelli from across the room. "There you are."

He gulped, all thoughts of African continental disputes forgotten. "Here I…am?"

"I heard a few things while I was at Kelly's today, nerd," she growled, stalking over to him with such predatory grace that Spinelli had to fight the urge to flee. "And I'm going to ask you about them, just so I can be sure to get it straight from the horse's mouth."

Jason stripped off his jacket, unconcerned with these goings-on, and flopped down on Elizabeth's sofa where he recovered the morning paper he'd left on the ottoman earlier that day. Spinelli got the distinct feeling that his beloved mentor was more than used to such threatening outbursts and, moreover, had accepted them as part of his life.

Which meant, of course, that he'd be of absolutely no help should the Dragon pursue bodily harm.

And the Dragon usually pursued bodily harm.

"W-What have you heard?"

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared ferociously at him. "I've heard that you've been flirting around with a waitress there by the name of Lesley Lu Spencer."

Spinelli's eyes brightened, and Jason realized too late that this was a mistake. "Oh, you mean the Fair Lulu, the Blonde One. Yes, the Jackal introduced himself a while ago and makes sure to show up for lunch there everyday so as to put himself in Fair Lulu's good graces."

"And in doing so, runs the very real risk of putting himself in _my_ bad graces," Elizabeth growled, stalking forward until she was standing toe-to-toe with him. He was a few inches taller than her, unfortunately, which dealt a blow to the intimidation factor, but Elizabeth was okay with that. After all, she knew the little nerd had the good sense to be afraid of her when the situation called for it.

"What are you talking about?"

"You can't be with Lulu," Elizabeth announced, her chin jutting out defiantly as she laid down the law. "You can't flirt with her, you can't pursue a relationship with her, and you certainly can't _like_ her."

Jason's and Spinelli's brows both rose, and the boy's green eyes darted from side to side as if he was certain she was talking to someone else. "I'm sorry – what?"

"I forbid it," she declared primly. "I completely forbid it."

Oh, Spinelli knew it would be wrong. He knew it would be a mistake. He knew that it would mean him getting tackled to the floor and pelted with her small but surprisingly sturdy fists. But he did it anyway.

He burst out laughing.

Her face grew redder and redder by the time he was done, skipping from pink all the way to crimson without stopping at fuschia, red, or even scarlet. Spinelli wiped away a tear, his chest still rumbling with laughter.

"You're not serious, right?" he wheezed, still grinning. "I mean, you can't honestly think that you have any say over who I see."

"I can and I do!" Elizabeth burst out, knowing that she was being irrational and knowing that she had no leg to stand on, but damn it, of all the people… "You _can't_ be interested in that twit, Spinelli, you just can't!"

"Why not?" Spinelli asked, folding his arms across his chest. "The Blonde One is fair and lovely, with golden hair like a halo, and she's kind and sweet and considerate and funny and smart and thoughtful, and she doesn't have a mean bone in her body."

Elizabeth, who he realized with belated surprise had actually been listening to all that, seemed to deflate slightly, and if Spinelli wasn't mistaken, he could have sworn that he saw her eyes shimmer. "Oh, Spinelli."

"She is," he insisted. "She's wonderful, and I can see her whenever I want and you don't get to say anything. Why do you think you have any control over this anyway?"

"Because if you start dating her, then I'm going to have to deal with her," the brunette fired back, having regained some of her ire. "She's going to be at Harborview all the time, in my direct line of vision, and I'm going to have to talk to her and eat with her and deal with her, and I'd rather gouge her eyes out with my stiletto than do _any _of those things!"

Spinelli was aghast. "That's very graphic and violent."

"It's true," she informed him archly before turning around to face Jason, who was reading the paper on the couch and looking gloriously indifferent. "You."

He glanced up, proving that he was at least a sensible man. "Me?"

Elizabeth planted her hands on her hips and glared. "How can you allow this?"

"How can I allow this?"

"My God, find a pirate to sit on," she muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose. "How can you let him see someone who's…who's…shrill and annoying and malicious with no respect for anyone's feelings, always out for number one; someone who's a complete harpy and will make his life _miserable_?"

The corner of Jason's mouth quirked upward, proving that he was definitely not a sensible man. "I'm seeing you, aren't I?"

_Ohhh._

Spinelli clamped his hand to his mouth to stifle a laugh as Elizabeth glowered and slowly inched forward until she was positively looming over her unrepentant excuse of a lover.

She angled her face down, her voice eerily tight. "Do you want to rethink that?"

Jason gulped. "Uh…"

This gave Spinelli the perfect opportunity to escape. "Well, it's been fun, but I'll see you kids later. The Fair Lulu awaits me at Kelly's with a hamburger and an extra tall orange soda."

Elizabeth barely glanced over her shoulder as the door slammed shut. "Well?"

Jason's cerulean eyes darted around the room. "Uh…do you want shiny or expensive this time?"

She muttered something far from complimentary under her breath and stomped away, pacing between the door and the back of her couch in a most agitated manner. "You were of absolutely no help, you know that?"

Jason sighed and set down the paper, then got up and ambled over to her. "Elizabeth, come on, what's the problem? So he likes Lulu Spencer. Big deal. They'll date. They'll go to dinner and they'll go to movies and they'll make out at Vista Point. And I promise that if you don't want to be around her, you won't have to be. I'll make sure of it myself."

"It could have been anyone but her," Elizabeth muttered bitterly as if she hadn't even heard him, and Jason frowned when he saw that she looked much more tired than usual. Smaller, too.

He leaned against the back of the couch, his hands gripping the wooden frame for better balance. "What do you mean?"

"Is there some shortage of girls in this town?" she wondered aloud, rolling her eyes acerbically. Jason's eyes widened when he realized that she was actually going through something here. "What, did all the eligible chicks under 20 suddenly take hands and flee? He couldn't find _anyone_ but her?"

Jason watched her carefully. "Elizabeth?"

She turned wordlessly.

"What's wrong with Lulu Spencer?"

A long pause followed, and Jason was beginning to doubt she'd even answer when Elizabeth closed her eyes and let out a slow breath.

"I hate her," she whispered.

It wasn't what he had been expecting, but Jason didn't show any surprise. "Come here."

Amazingly, she did. She came just close enough so that he could reach out and put his hands on her hips, threading his thumbs through the belt loops of her jeans and using the leverage to pull her closer until she was standing between his legs.

"Why do you hate her?" he probed, trying to catch her gaze. "I don't think you're the kind of person to hate someone without a reason."

"Well, I hate-"

"Ritchie's stupid face, I know," he filled in. "But this is about Lulu. Why do you hate her so much that you don't even want Spinelli to talk to her?"

Elizabeth gritted her teeth and looked away, and this time it was Jason's turn to realize that her eyes had started to shimmer. "I don't wanna get into it."

He didn't say anything. It took everything in him to keep silent, but Jason did it. He just continued to hold her the way he was, and soon splayed a large hand out at the small of her back and stroked in small circles. She'd taken to playing with the neck of his t-shirt, anything to avoid his gaze.

Until finally, she spoke.

"Lulu's a Spencer."

Well, that was stating the obvious. So Jason waited.

"She's a Spencer right down to the tips of her toes. And basically, that means that whatever her parents thinks, she thinks, too." Elizabeth pursed her lips and absently traced the edge of his shirt lightly with her fingernail.

"Luke and Laura are very close to the Quartermaines," she continued softly. "And Luke is basically dead-set on principle against anything that Nikolas does, and Laura follows him up on it because she's an insipid, weak woman without two thoughts to bang together in her head."

Jason smirked and gently pulled her closer.

"And they hate Sonny because – because…" She had to stop and clear her throat before she could continue. "Because he's friends with Nikolas and he supports Nikolas, and because he had Alexis emancipate me and then declared himself as my legal guardian."

Jason nodded carefully. "He mentioned hiring Alexis to take care of it, but he never mentioned the specifics of how he…got you."

"My parents were driving me nuts after the accident," Elizabeth confessed. "So much so that the General Hospital psychiatrist actually recommended me for suicide watch because I was doing just about anything to get away from them."

Jason swallowed roughly. He hadn't known that.

"The only good part of my day was when Sonny would visit," she recalled with a small smile. "And he knew instantly, without even asking, how unhappy I was. So he had Stan dig up some dirt on my parents. Turns out, both Jeff and Carolyn were having affairs while I was in the hospital, and before that."

She lifted her head and whisked her bangs out of her face. "Alexis used the proof Sonny provided as grounds for emancipation. I signed the documents and was out, free and clear. That was when the Spencers and Quartermaines moved in, trying to get me to let them take care of me. That went on for a long time. Alexis had all the papers drafted and cleared everything with the judges, and Sonny was declared my temporary legal guardian. Later, we made that permanent."

A sardonic smile twisted her lips. "And the Spencers never forgave him. It was bad enough that Laura's prodigal son abandoned her – forget the fact that she abandoned him as an infant for her rapist – but now their closest friends had lost their daughter to a moblord. Lulu was growing up hearing all of this, and she's come to hate me and Sonny the same way."

Jason held silent even though doing so meant he had to actively bite his tongue. He had a feeling she needed to get something important out in the open.

"You and Sonny probably talked about why I stayed in Penthouse II and he stayed in Penthouse IV," she murmured, idly trailing her fingers down to his stomach because, really, she didn't have anything else to do with them.

Jason nodded.

"He probably told you something about how it wasn't appropriate, given our ages, and how people talked enough."

Jason nodded again.

Elizabeth gritted her teeth, most likely grinding them to powder, and shrugged. "People certainly did talk. No thanks to Lulu."

His eyes steeled and narrowed. "What do you mean?"

She didn't make eye contact. "Lulu was the one who told anyone that cared to listen that Sonny and I were lovers."

Her voice was no louder than a breath, but it still felt like a punch in the gut. "What?"

"She spread it around that Sonny got custody of me so that he could keep me locked up in Harborview Towers like his own private little whore," Elizabeth shrugged again, looking anywhere but at Jason. "I'm sure half the town still thinks that to be true."

She held silent for a long time, waiting for him to say something – anything – but Jason didn't comply. And finally, when the silence just became too much to bear, she braved a glance at him.

And found him positively _seething_.

His lips were pursed into a thin line, his face was redder than usual, his eyes were pure steel and flashing, a muscle in his jaw ticked at a furious pace, and a cord in his neck was beginning to stand out.

And he'd never looked more dashing.

Something fluttered deep inside her, something she didn't want to name, think about, or even acknowledge as a part of herself, but it was there all the same. He was so consummately angry, and all on her behalf. She'd just never expected it.

"And Sonny didn't do anything?"

Even his thin, lethal voice couldn't cut through her warm haze of fuzziness. "Huh?"

"Sonny," he ground out. "What did Sonny do when he found out?"

"Uh…" She thought back to that terrible time that she'd done her best to block out. "He virtually bankrupted Luke by seizing all of his assets that he could. Him and Nikolas both, just to twist that knife deeper."

"It was the least he could have done," Jason grumbled bitterly.

Elizabeth smiled softly in agreement and set her hand lightly on the inflamed skin of his neck, feeling his pulse matching time with her own. "They've never really recovered from that, you know."

A callous snort. "Good."

Her forehead rested lightly against his. "Yeah."

And then, as if she'd just realized her position, Elizabeth straightened and resumed her previous, more composed air. "And that's why I don't want Spinelli anywhere near Lulu," she repeated.

Jason blinked, surprised by the sudden shift. "…I get that."

"That's why I can't stand the thought of them being together," Elizabeth continued. "Jason, I just can't. She's awful, and Spinelli deserves so much better than a lying, manipulative shrew like her because he's so nice and trusting and she'd use him, Jason, I know she would, and-"

He quieted her by placing a single finger on her lips. "It won't happen."

Her lips remained in a delightful little 'o' of befuddlement. "What do you mean?"

"I'll talk to him," Jason replied. "I'll explain to him why he-"

"But you can't!" Elizabeth burst out, shaking her head frantically. "I don't want him to _know_ all that!"

Jason's brows furrowed. "But-"

"For Christ's sake, it was hard enough telling you," she cried, exasperated. "I don't want the nerd to know. I'd never be able to look him in the eye again."

He nodded, slowly at first but then with increased resolution. "Okay, I won't tell him. But I'll make sure he doesn't pursue anything with Lulu."

She was eyeing him skeptically. "How?"

Jason shrugged. "I'll just find him someone else."

Elizabeth stared at him for so long that he actually started to wonder if she'd heard. And then, the most amazing thing happened. She started smiling the funniest, oddest, loopiest smile he'd ever seen.

"You'd go out looking for another girlfriend for Spinelli."

He shrugged again, realizing it sounded more ridiculous when it came from her mouth. "Uh, yeah."

Her grin grew. "You're going to do that."

Her disbelief rankled, and Jason found himself bristling just a little. "Yeah, I said I would, didn't I?"

Elizabeth still smiled. "Thank you."

And just like that, he forgot why he was irritated. Offering her a hesitant smile of his own, Jason used his hold on her hips to pull her closer and then gently brushed his lips against hers. "You're welcome."

Amazingly, she let him kiss her. It came as a surprise to him, in the few moments that his sanity remained while her mouth coupled sweetly with his. The fact was that Elizabeth never let him kiss her – on the cheek, on the temple, wherever – if they weren't falling into bed together. And though he hadn't thought at first that it would bother him, it was starting to.

The tip of her tongue traced the seam of his lips, but Jason kept his mouth closed, keeping the kiss chaste. But the brunette grew more insistent, tickling the corner of his mouth with her tongue and then boldly nipping his lip until he finally granted her entrance.

And as the kiss deepened, Jason knew what would happen. They'd find themselves on the couch in no time. Or maybe the floor. He'd taken her on the floor a couple times, and she'd enjoyed herself in every way a woman should.

This was what always happened, so he shouldn't have been surprised. In truth, he wasn't surprised – not by her, at any rate. He was more surprised by himself. He had actually expected this of her. Every time he tried to kiss her and leave it at that, she pulled him back in and they went for it. As if she had something to prove.

But it was hard to complain with her pressed up against him in all the right places, so Jason did his best not to.


	33. Chapter 33

Previously – Elizabeth kicks Jason out of her penthouse, then drags him right back in; Elizabeth, Jason and Sonny celebrate Spinelli's birthday; Jason and Sonny discuss relationships; Elizabeth gets Jason to agree to find Spinelli a new girl.

**Note **– In hopes of avoiding false advertising, let me just say that I have no intentions of dragging this story out with Jason's hunt for Spinelli's girlfriend. Lulu-bashing and a cameo of my favorite teen girl is as much as I can do for this fic.

Also, quick note: unlike on the show, Monica is Jason's biological mother here and she is not AJ's biological mother. And Edward was a doctor in his younger years and then became a businessman. Also…spoiler peeps will recognize some fun spoilers from over the years. ;) (These spoilers were never true, just Anon bull crap, so SFs needn't worry about being tainted!)

This is another super long chapter. Enjoy.

Hack | 33

"How did you like staying at PCU this week?"

Spinelli beamed at his mentor as he dumped his duffel bag on the floor. For the past five days, he and a bunch of other technologically gifted kids had camped out in the dormitories at PCU and been paid to set up the school's entire network and hook up all the new computers in preparation for the fall term, which would be starting in a couple weeks.

"It was most excellent, Stone Cold," he gushed. "I had the coolest roommate – he was a Trekkie! Can you believe it?"

"Unfortunately, yeah," Jason grumbled, taking a sip of his morning coffee. It was still fairly early, and he hadn't been expecting Spinelli back so soon. As it was, he was dressed in just his pajama bottoms and was only on his first cup of coffee. "You get all that computer stuff set up?"

The boy's head bobbed up and down as he took off his shoes. "Yeah. The new computers are really nice. I was very impressed. And they gave us full run of the place, too." His eyes glittered. "Not a particularly bright idea."

Jason groaned. "I'm not going to pay Alexis triple to get down to the courthouse and bail out one of her clients any time soon, am I?"

"Depends whether or not you can keep yourself out of trouble," Spinelli replied blithely, dropping his keys on the desk before heading toward the stairs.

Jason rolled his eyes, and would have issued a retort had Spinelli not stopped just then, having clearly heard footsteps upstairs.

"Stone Cold?"

"Yeah?"

"Is someone here?"

Jason shifted his weight from one foot to the other, but before he could reply, Elizabeth came ambling down the stairs dressed in just his shirt.

"Hey, nerd," she greeted Spinelli casually, pushing his chin up in order to set his jaw back in place. "Attracting flies."

She spied the cup of coffee in Jason's hand and instantly reached for it, taking it from him. "Is there any left for you?"

Jason rolled his eyes as she commandeered his mug. "Yeah, I'll go get some more. Spinelli, you want some?"

The boy was currently too wrapped up in Elizabeth to hear him. It wasn't the first time he'd seen her partially undressed, just the first time he'd seen her partially undressed in _his_ penthouse. And really, some things were sacred.

"You…spent the night here?"

She nodded indifferently. "Yeah."

"You…spent the past week here?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "Pretty much."

His lips thinned. "You do know it's bugged, right?"

She allowed him a sly smirk. "I'd heard something about that, yes."

And when Jason came back with her cup of coffee, Elizabeth remembered something and thrust her cup into his hand, then took off up the stairs.

"I'll be back in a bit – I have to shower and change."

Jason watched her leave and then looked at Spinelli. He was holding two cups of coffee in his hand and extended one toward the boy, who took it gingerly.

"So…you and the Dragon have been cohabitating _here_ while I was gone," Spinelli got out, taking a small sip.

Jason went for the nonchalant approach. "Yeah."

Spinelli eyed him suspiciously and then skirted around him, heading for the safety of the couch. "I don't condone that, Stone Cold."

He wasn't even back for ten minutes and already the kid was annoying him. "Really."

Spinelli nodded earnestly. "You have to remember, this is _our_ humble abode, not the Dragon's. You can't let her stay here – _I_ stay here."

"How could I forget?" Jason murmured dryly.

The boy skewered him with an impressive glare. He was learning fast. But then again, between Jason, Elizabeth and Sonny, he had good teachers. "All I'm saying is that some things are sacred, Stone Cold. And I guess I could forgive this arrangement if you and the Dragon kept your activities confined to your bedroom and not, say, this couch."

He shuddered, thoroughly disgusted. "The visuals alone give me hives. I don't know what I'd do if you and the Dragon had engaged in unholy carnal relations on _my_ sofa."

When he looked over at his beloved mentor, Spinelli found him smirking wickedly.

And Spinelli in turn found _that_ very unsettling.

His jaw dropped. "Oh, my God – you _did_ engage in unholy carnal relations on this sofa, didn't you?"

Jason grinned and shrugged, but didn't deny it.

"EW!" Like a shot, Spinelli was on his feet and vigorously rubbing his clothes. "Oh, gross! Sick, Stone Cold, you're filthy! Filthy!"

He glared at the enforcer while inching over to the pool table. "You know what? I'm just going to sit here and look at you until you have the sense to be ashamed of your dirty doings."

"You're going to sit on the pool table?" Jason scratched the stubble on his cheek. "I don't think you'd want to do that."

Spinelli, who had been bracing his hands on the green felt, yanked them off as if they burned to the touch. "You _didn't_."

Jason looked back at him, smugly unrepentant, the bastard. "Afraid so. Twice."

It was far more information than the boy needed or appreciated, and he hopped off the pool table so fast that the seat of his pants might as well have been on fire.

"Fine," he scowled, marching across the living room. "I'm going to sit on this little armchair."

"You sure you wanna do that?"

He turned over his shoulder and gave his mentor an assessing look. "Do I?"

Jason's smile widened. "Probably not."

"Then I'll sit on the stairs," Spinelli announced, stopping in his tracks when Jason laughed and shook his head, hiding his grin behind the rim of his mug. "Oh, for Christ's sake, there, too? What, you couldn't make it to a bed?"

He shook his head. "Nope."

The boy shuddered visibly, and spun around on his heel. "Fine. I'm sitting on your desk chair. That's right, the desk chair you never let me sit on, I'm going to sit on it now because you have left me with no choice."

Jason fought a wicked smirk as Spinelli flopped down and spun around to face him, his disgust having made him defiant. "It's a nice chair. Strong."

He took another sip of his coffee. "Can easily hold the weight of two people."

Spinelli's jaw dropped. "You're not serious."

Jason arched a brow superciliously. "When have I ever lied about sex?"

Spinelli was out of the chair so fast that the boy was a blur. "FINE! I'll sit on your desk."

He plopped his bottom down on the file of transcripts that Jason had to go over by noon and crossed his arms over his chest. "Unless you've done it here, too."

"I cleared off all the papers first," Jason replied smoothly.

Spinelli gagged and hopped off, then turned around in a circle while vigorously swiping at his bottom. All that served was to make him look like a cartoon. "Is there anywhere in this penthouse that you haven't done it? The couch, the pool table, the arm chair, the stairs, the desk chair, the desk – what about the balcony?"

Jason shrugged. "It was a nice night."

Spinelli turned ashen and gawked at him. "Kitchen counters?"

"Elizabeth came down for a drink of water last night," came the extremely pleased reply. "I was a bit thirsty, too."

How he didn't keel over right there from the horrible mental images was a mystery – a blessed mystery. Spinelli looked around and then plastered himself against the wall by the door. "Okay, what about this square foot right here? Can I stand here?"

Jason took another sip of his coffee and glanced over his shoulder. "Funny you picked that spot. You've gotta pick a sturdy, load-bearing spot like that if you're going to do it against the wall."

Spinelli flailed wildly and reached for the doorknob. Wrenching the door open, he jumped out into the hall and looked expectantly at his mentor as Jason walked over to the door. "What about here? This spot is safe, right?"

Jason nodded. "Yeah, that spot's safe."

And then he shut the door in Spinelli's face.

"Can't believe I didn't think of that sooner," he muttered, heading up the stairs as he wondered whether or not he still had time to join Elizabeth in the shower.

~*~*~*~*~*~

A little while later…

Elizabeth had already left for her breakfast date with Nikolas and Jason was just about to start going through the folder of transcripts on his desk when there was a knock at the door. He dropped the file on the coffee table and ambled over, pulling it open to see a vaguely curious Sonny standing in the hall.

"Jason, why is Spinelli sobbing on my couch in the fetal position?"

The corner of his mouth twisted downward. "Uh, he just found out that they canceled _Star Trek: Deep Space Nine_ reruns."

The mobster's brows jumped. "Oh. Poor kid."

Jason smirked and turned around, heading back to the morning's work. "Did you need something?"

"Yeah, actually, I wanted to ask you about something else," Sonny replied, slowly walking inside. "I heard rumors that Luke Spencer was going to enter into a profitable partnership with Zacchara out west, and that Anthony called this morning out of the blue and pulled out. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

Jason's eyes glittered, but his expression showed a decided lack of humor. "I figured Zacchara's a nice guy, and that he deserved to have all the information on his future business partner."

"Real information or embellished?"

"Does it really matter?"

If Sonny had further questions, he didn't voice them. "Not one bit. Okay. Just wondering."

He turned to leave, but something made him stop. "Hey."

Jason glanced up. "Yeah?"

"How are things? Everything okay?"

The enforcer nodded slowly. "Yeah, everything's fine."

A long silence followed until Sonny cleared his throat. "You're angry with me."

Jason licked his lips and considered it. "No, not really," he replied honestly.

And it was true: he wasn't. Not really, anyway; just as he'd said. Sonny had irritated him a bit with his slightly patronizing talk about him and Elizabeth being on different pages, but then again, his best friend had always assumed to know Jason better than Jason knew himself. That part wasn't surprising.

Sonny just had it wrong this time. It was no big deal, and certainly nothing to get upset about.

A few paces away, Sonny looked relieved. "Okay, good. Because it wasn't my intention to come off so strong."

"You didn't," Jason assured him. "It's fine."

"You sure?"

He nodded. "Yeah, don't worry about it."

Sonny gave him a small smile and nodded back. "Okay, then. I have to get back, so I'll leave you to your work."

He was almost out the door when he heard Jason muttering under his breath. "You're just completely wrong this time."

Sonny let out a sigh and stepped out into the hall. He hoped so, but somehow he didn't _think_ so.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Why do we have to go to this thing, again?"

Elizabeth spared Jason an indulgent look. "Because hardly anyone does, even though it's for a very good cause."

The two of them were currently at the local art show held in the town hall building. Local artists of all ages participated and entered their drawings and paintings, and visitors got to peruse the collections and bid on the pieces they wanted. All proceeds went to the General Hospital children's wing.

Elizabeth had spent most of the morning trying to convince Sonny, Spinelli, Alexis, and any of the guards that would listen to go. But Sonny had an important phone call that he was waiting for, Spinelli flaked on her and zipped off to Kelly's on his new segueway, Alexis had work to do, and the guards were either on duty or at home, sleeping after getting back from their duty.

So naturally, she had grabbed Jason and dragged him along.

"I can't see any of this stuff, anyway."

She slid her hand into the crook of his elbow and pulled him past an impressive rendering of Kelly's done in colored pencils. "I'll explain it to you," she said gently. "Besides, it's not about the art, anyway."

He spared her a similarly indulgent look. "No, I never thought it was."

"Are you making fun of me?"

Her eyes only narrowed when he smiled. "Just a little."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes, looking remarkably cute for someone who was currently irritated with him. "It's a good cause, Jason," she repeated. "The children's wing needs all the money it can get – those kids need toys and stimulation and bright colors and cheer. And most of these artists are high school kids, anyway, and it's important to support them on their one day in the spotlight. I usually pick up several paintings if I can. I usually end up putting them up in the warehouse and at the offices."

"You know, I always wondered why there was a sketch of a cow's ass in the lobby when you enter the warehouse," Jason mused.

Elizabeth wasn't amused. "That's a sketch by your little sister of your grandfather and mine the day they founded the hospital."

"I know what I said."

She laughed, pausing to admire a painting of the fountain in the park. "You're awful."

"You like it."

She couldn't argue with him there, so Elizabeth pulled him along to the section of still life paintings. "Any preferences? Any at all?"

"I prefer we go home."

Elizabeth smacked him gently on the stomach. "Come on, this is probably the only dose of culture you're going to get all year – as paltry as it may be."

Jason grunted and let her pull him past seven paintings of fruit bowls. This was culture? This was what held civilizations together? It was rotting fruit sitting in ugly bowls in dim rooms. He wasn't an expert – hell, he could barely see the stuff – but even Jason knew that didn't qualify as high art or high culture.

But if Elizabeth wanted to be here and support the kids that had to stay at the hospital she hated, he would put up with it all. No matter how out of place he felt.

As a rule, Jason rarely felt out of place. He liked to blend in and once he did that, he always felt like he owned whichever locale he happened to be in. And that confidence and the quick-thinking that came with it was what had saved his life dozens of times over.

Here, however, he had the feeling that he was completely out of his element. All around him were hospital types – doctors, nurses, candy-stripers, probable board members. Hell, they'd walked past Patrick in the main lobby, where he'd been flirting with a pretty Persian nurse. It was only a matter of time before they met up with the Quartermaines or the Webbers.

He suspected that Elizabeth knew that, but the cause meant too much to her for her to sit this one out. Instead, she'd simply put herself together as she did any other time she ventured out and walked through the exhibition rooms with her head held high and her attention focused just on him and the paintings. She didn't make a move for the refreshments, she didn't engage anyone in small talk; she just walked and looked and spoke to him.

And seeing her now, dressed in her black editor pants and a pretty collared silk blouse, Jason felt even more oafishly out of place in his frayed jeans and worn t-shirt. His fashion sense understood two options: comfortable and uncomfortable. Or as the rest of the world put it, jeans and monkey suits. Since the joint was too casual for a tux or a suit, he'd shown up in his jeans and now felt awkward and out of place among the others.

It was almost always like this with Elizabeth. Maybe that was why he rarely ventured out in public with her. She was always so perfectly put together and perfectly composed, and he was always so…casual. They were like night and day when they walked down the sidewalk, and he knew it was impossible not to notice.

He had asked her about her dressing habits once, and had been informed that she liked to dress well any time she ventured out in public because when she did so, she was presenting the image of Sonny Corinthos and the Corinthos-Morgan empire. It was important that she be presentable and well-dressed in expensive, well-tailored clothes to present the right image. He'd teased her about the need to 'keep up appearances,' and she hadn't been amused with having her own words used against her.

"Jason, look!" She was tugging on his arm and, forgetting her carefully cultivated manners for a second, pointed at one of the paintings across the room. "Look at that one!"

It grew more in focus as they drew closer, and Jason could barely make out some sort of colored box and a string of lights. "What is it?"

"It's Jake's," Elizabeth explained excitedly. "See? Here's the bar, with the lights over it, and here's the jukebox and here are all the stools and here, right in the shadows, you can see the edge of the pool tables. I have to get this – I just have to. Screw the warehouse, I'll put it up in my penthouse."

She pulled out the tag and squinted at it, turning it over to find the artist's name. "Who made this? They had a great eye for detail, that's for – oh, here it is. Georgie Jones. Oh, I know her. I can't believe she made this – I could have sworn that she's underage."

"I am," came a sheepish reply, and both Jason and Elizabeth turned around to see a tall girl with a sweet oval face and dark golden curls standing a foot or so away. "But I don't let that stop me."

Elizabeth laughed and gestured to the painting. "I really, really like this. Can I cut you the check now, or-"

"Actually, all payments are made at that ticket window," Georgie replied, pointing it out to them. "The donations go to-"

"Oh, right, I know," Elizabeth replied, fishing around in her purse for her Corinthos-issued checkbook. "I make it a habit to pay the artist the same amount I pay for the painting."

Jason watched as the girl's eyes widened. "Oh, no, you don't have to do that, really, it's not necessary. I just do this for fun-"

"I've always done this, and I'm not stopping now," Elizabeth interrupted, using the wall as a lean post against which to write the appropriate numbers and her signature. "And besides, there's no way you should let this painting go without taking a cut for yourself. God knows I would if I could handle a paintbrush. There. You take this and I'll go submit this ticket."

"It's really not-"

"You might as well take it," Jason drawled as Elizabeth practically shoved the check into Georgie's hand. "She never listens."

The brunette glared at him. "And he thinks he has all the answers."

Georgie gaped at the check in her hand, then lifted her wide eyes to the couple. "I – thank you, that's very generous of you. I'll put up the flag on this one."

She reached over and quickly put up the ticker that showed that a particular work had been purchased. "Again, thank you so much."

Elizabeth waved her hand, never comfortable with such things. "You got any other paintings here? We'd love to take a look."

Georgie's head bobbed up and down. "Yeah, actually, I had a painting of the fountain from the park up toward the front, and I sketched the view from the ground looking up at Vista Point. It's over there, right by my metal etching of the waterfront, if you want to see-"

"We'll take them all," Elizabeth replied breezily before turning to Jason. "Boy, it's a good thing you brought the car, otherwise we'd never be able to fit them all."

He grunted in reply and watched as she pulled out another check. "These going to the warehouse or your place?"

"Mine and Sonny's," she answered as Georgie tried her best not to faint at the number of zeroes on the check. "Maybe I'll put his up in his office at the warehouse. I think he'll like the one of the docks. Here you go. Thank you, Georgie."

The girl struggled to find the right thing to say, but Jason and Elizabeth were already fixing to leave. She thought to say a simple goodbye and thank them for their patronage when she spotted a few of the other patrons and found herself blurting out, "Wait!"

Jason and Elizabeth turned around, both of them wearing matching confused expressions. "Excuse me?"

Georgie bit her lip and her eyes darted back and forth from the couple to the group of newcomers. "Er, I just thought that maybe you'd want to wait a few minutes before leaving."

Elizabeth arched an eyebrow. "Why would we want to wait?"

She felt her cheeks burning and discreetly tipped her chin toward the door. "Because, uh, your families are standing by the entrance."

Against their better judgment, Jason and Elizabeth both whirled around and stared only to find Jeff, Carolyn, Alan, Monica, Edward, Audrey, and Steve staring back at them with unabashed interest. Seeing that the kids were looking at them, they began whispering to each other, and nodding and pointing in their direction.

Jason and Elizabeth both groaned aloud in unison as Georgie troubled her lower lip and tried not to look terribly interested in what would surely be the best gossip of the evening.

"Fuck it," Jason declared. "I don't want to be in the same room with them longer than I have to."

"Georgie, can you submit the tickets for the paintings we bought and put up the flags?" Elizabeth inquired. "We'll send someone back in half an hour to pick them all up."

The girl nodded quickly. "Yeah, sure, that'll be fine."

"Great," the brunette muttered as Jason quickly took her hand. "Let's just get out of here."

"We'll have to walk right past them," Jason muttered close to her ear. "Better hold your breath."

She giggled despite herself and held tight, and the two marched across the room toward the entrance/exit with matching strides and a deliberate, no-nonsense gait. They made sure not to spare the group a second glance, but naturally, this did not deter Edward Quartermaine as he bravely stepped out and blocked their path.

"Jason, my boy, it's good to see you out in polite society," he started, the words coming out fast because he knew he had a twenty-second window, at best. "And with Little Lizzie, no less. Are you two currently seeing-"

Jason tightened his grip on Elizabeth's hand and side-stepped the man neatly, keeping the petite brunette close to his side as they both strode out into the hall and out the door. Elizabeth kept her ears craned as they left the town hall and was able to catch some of what her parents and his murmured.

"Did you see how fast he blew out of here? No manners, that ruffian."

"And look how close Lizzie is to him – she's tucked right against him. Jeffrey, I told you."

"You were right, Carolyn – is that what you wanted to hear?"

"Yep, those two are definitely involved."

Elizabeth groaned as Jason led her to the car. "We'll make Page Six first thing tomorrow morning for sure if those idiots have anything to say about it."

And of course, that was exactly what happened. The _Port Charles Gazette_, never known for its high quality or even ethical journalism, devoted a third of the front page to a story on a fire at the Metrocourt that killed seventeen including five children, and a little more than three-quarters of page six to the town's new "it" couple, Jason Morgan-Quartermaine and Elizabeth Webber, being seen out and about town together shopping for their apartment and looking very cozy, at that. The phrase "prodigal son" was repeated eleven times, prompting Spinelli to make a particularly disparaging remark about the unimaginative reporter and the incompetent editor. The article closed out nicely, speculating that a spring wedding was in the works.

Also, Jason was going to quit the mob.

And Elizabeth was going to be flattered.

And Elizabeth and Jason were going to leave town for about six weeks for destinations unknown.

And Michael Corinthos was very opposed to the wedding and had threatened to cut off his ward and put a hit out on his enforcer if they went through with it.

And that because of this, Jason would return to the Quartermaines and take up his rightful place at ELQ, and that his oldest son would immediately be announced as the heir to the family fortune.

And that was when Jason and Spinelli both grabbed an end of the paper, tore it in half down the middle, and tossed both pieces into the fire.

~*~*~*~*~*~

A few days later, nighttime, Sonny's penthouse…

"Why is Elizabeth on the balcony?"

Spinelli, who sat alone reading a tech magazine in the Corinthos living room as his arch-nemesis banged and kicked at the balcony door, didn't even look up as his mentor walked in.

"I locked her out there."

Jason's eyes bulged as Elizabeth screamed profanities. "What?"

The boy didn't lift his eyes from the spread on the new Pentium processor. "She was smashing a coconut with a hammer out there, so I took advantage of the opportunity."

The enforcer scowled and hurried over to the door, grunting as he pried loose the chair that Spinelli had jammed under the handles just for good measure. "Why the hell would you do that?"

"She's been annoying me lately."

Jason glared at the back of his head as Elizabeth landed a solid kick. "We've been in Canada for the past three days, Spinelli."

It was true. Not wanting to put up with the rest of the town after the disastrous Page Six spread, Jason had suggested hopping on his bike and driving up to Canada. Elizabeth had readily agreed, much to his surprise, and they'd spent a romantic long weekend up by the border and had only returned the previous night.

"She's been annoying me in spirit."

Jason tested the lock and threw his shoulder against the door to work the jam. "You'll pay for this."

"Probably," Spinelli replied blandly. "But I'll tell you, not having her around for three days was heaven. The Jackal put those three days to most excellent use, by the way."

Jason paused and looked over at him as Elizabeth tapped the glass, irritated at having been so conveniently forgotten. "What does that mean?"

"I had our whole penthouse steam-cleaned."

The enforcer gaped at him. "You didn't."

"The couch, the armchair, the floor, the stairs, everything," he answered, sounding infuriatingly bored. "Had the balcony and counters scoured, and replaced the felt on the pool table. I was gonna have the walls painted, but I didn't have enough time before you got back. Plus, Derrida and his pals hate the fumes."

"You could have used those three days to get Pest Control over to the penthouse," Jason scowled. "Gotten rid of those damn birds."

"They annoy you so much that I thought we'd keep 'em."

"You're a dead man, Spinelli."

"So I've heard."

"What's the matter with you?" Jason exploded, exasperated. After four years of being quite a dependable sidekick, the boy picked _now_ to finally act like a teenager. "Is this because I told you to stay away from Lulu?"

"I don't like being threatened, Stone Cold," the boy replied evenly, not lifting his nose from the magazine. "And I'm going to find out _why_ you want me away from her so bad. Mark my words. The Jackal is nothing if not diligent."

"Except maybe suicidal."

They heard shuffling in the hall and Sonny picked that exact moment to walk into the penthouse after a long day at the warehouse, and the mobster looked around in veiled surprise as he took in the sight of Spinelli lounging on his armchair, Jason working the balcony doors, and Elizabeth looking so angry she could spit.

"What's Elizabeth doing out on the balcony?"

"Getting some fresh air," Spinelli smirked, flipping the page and drooling over an ad for a 100GB flash drive. Honestly, you could store an elephant on one of those things. "You know, since she doesn't get any of it in her own penthouse."

"Oh," Sonny replied, as if that made perfect sense and was a perfectly acceptable explanation. Then, to Jason's surprise, he calmly walked past Spinelli and took a seat in the other armchair by the wet bar and picked up the paper.

Elizabeth tapped on the glass again, snapping Jason out of it, and he gave the door one more good shove before trying the handles and setting her free.

"I'm going to KILL him!"

Jason lunged for her as soon as the petite dynamo flew into the penthouse, fully bent on beating Spinelli into a pulp. "Elizabeth-"

"He locked me out there," she yelled, swinging her hammer so dangerously that Jason was actually nervous. Keeping one arm around her small waist, he used the other to finagle it out of her hold and set it safely down on the dining table. "He locked me out there and he's going to pay."

"Elizabeth, it's late," Jason cajoled. "The neighbors complain about the noise enough. Can't you kill him tomorrow?"

She actually considered it. "Well, I guess that would give me time to work out a game plan…"

"That's my girl," Jason murmured, taking her arm and leading her over to the couch. "Sit with me. Don't pay any attention to him."

After all, Spinelli certainly wasn't paying any attention to _them_.

"Stupid nerd," Jason muttered.

Elizabeth looked up at him in surprise. "What did you say?"

"Er, nothing," he stammered. "Just sit down."

She let him pull her down onto the couch, halfway in his lap. "I'm going to kill him, you know. And then I'm going to dance on his grave."

"I know, honey," Jason soothed, reaching for the paper. As he did so, he didn't notice that Sonny looked up immediately upon hearing the endearment, and that the mobster's eyes were on Elizabeth. If anything, she looked…annoyed to hear him call her that. Maybe that was one of their ridiculous rules – no sweet nicknames or endearments.

Sonny's mouth curved downward and he disappeared behind the front page again as Jason came up with the Business section.

"And just for that, I'm not sharing any of my copra with you," Elizabeth huffed, gesturing to the fragments of raw, milky coconut she held in her hands. "So there."

"I think I'll live," came the bored reply.

She glowered at him and would have continued to do so had Jason not opened up the Business section and held it so that it enveloped her and blocked her view of him. They all sat in silence for a little while until Elizabeth noticed something.

"Hey, our prodigal families are in the paper."

Jason looked over to the page she was reading. "Where?"

A few feet away, Spinelli and Sonny also perked up. "They are? What's it about? Good or bad?"

"Get a load of this," Elizabeth laughed as Jason skimmed the story, smirking. "You know how my grandfather Steve partnered up with Edward a while ago when they joined the pharmaceutical industry and started making herbal supplements?"

Sonny was nodding. "Yeah, that made them both quite a lot of money, didn't it?"

"Listen to this," she grinned wickedly. "_ELQ manufactured and Webber endorsed herbal supplement Euphorzipan has been pulled from the market by the Federal Drug Administration. The supplement was engineered and marketed by the team of Steven Hardy, head of the Webber medical clan, and his partner Edward Quartermaine, a one-time doctor turned entrepreneur."_

"Why was Euphorzipan pulled from the market?" Spinelli wanted to know.

"Just wait," Jason chuckled, picking up where Elizabeth had left off. _"The supplement has been pulled from the market after a series of studies revealed conclusively that a compound in the product restricts gene expression in humans after prolonged use. The directions on the bright blue bottles instruct users to ingest the pills by mouth three times daily with meals."_

He cleared his throat and pushed on as Elizabeth laughed. _"Newer studies conducted by the FDA reveal greater dangers to the use of this supplement, which is popular among married couples because it boasts a greater sense of harmony, cooperation and affection in relationships."_

"A drug that helps you to have a better relationship?" Spinelli shook his head. "Unreal."

"Just listen," Elizabeth instructed impatiently. "Go ahead, Jason."

"_These studies revealed that the sense of well-being Euphorzipan created in relationships was merely the first sign of complete pituitary shut down and brain failure."_

Spinelli's jaw dropped. He wanted more than anything to say something, to toss in some witty rejoinder or a cunning remark with a sly smile. But for the life of him, he couldn't think of anything to say after that.

"Read that sentence again," Sonny instructed.

"These studies revealed that the sense of well-being Euphorzipan created in relationships was merely the first sign of complete pituitary shut down and brain failure."

When Elizabeth looked over at him, Sonny appeared to be doing his best to keep a straight face. And then, when he couldn't take it anymore and his shoulders started to quake with laughter, the mobster shot up out of his seat and headed to the wet bar. With his shaking back toward them, he proceeded to pour a glass of water as he better composed himself.

"I…there are just no words right now."

"No," Jason agreed with Spinelli as Elizabeth giggled. "There aren't."

"The poor Webbers and Quartermaines," the brunette feigned. "What a terrible setback. Couldn't have happened to nicer people as far as I'm concerned."

"My thoughts exactly," Sonny got out as he tried to sip his water without sending it out his nose. "Complete pituitary shut down. My God."

"Well, it serves them right," Elizabeth pointed out.

Jason glanced down at her. "What do you mean?"

She shrugged. "It's an example of hyperreality. Nerd, you know what I'm talking about, right?"

Spinelli nodded. "Baudrillard, sure."

"This is why I just can't get behind the idea of love."

Jason blinked and paused. "What does that mean?"

Elizabeth just shrugged again. It was getting pretty annoying, her constant shrugging. "Think about it. Take a look at the article, for Christ's sake. What's it about? It's about how we're medicating ourselves into falling in love."

He gawked at her, wondering how anyone could draw that conclusion. "It's not about-"

"It is," she insisted. "Why do these married idiots take Euphorzipan? Because they're trying to repress the fact that scientifically and statistically speaking, the average marriage expires in seven years."

"Dissolves, as in divorce," Jason corrected tersely.

"Expires, as in the end," Elizabeth shot back. "It has to do with how the married individuals evolve over time, and how their brain waves change over seven years of constant interaction with their spouse."

He groaned aloud. "Not brain waves again."

Elizabeth elbowed him in the stomach. "Anyway, these married idiots are trying to repress the fact that time's running out on their marriage, so they take pills to try to alter their brain waves and make it last."

She shrugged again. "We medicate ourselves into eating too much; we medicate ourselves into not eating enough. We medicate ourselves into sleeping. We medicate ourselves into being social creatures."

"Paxil," Spinelli supplied helpfully just in case anyone wasn't following along.

Elizabeth gave him an arch look. "We medicate ourselves into something as simple as breathing correctly. We medicate ourselves into normal bodily functions like relieving ourselves."

"Laxatives and diuretics?"

"Shut up!" she hissed. "We medicate the childhood out of our children, for Christ's sake. We medicate ourselves into emotions – feeling happy or sad. Is it so outlandish to think that we're medicating ourselves into love? Not that such a thing really exists, anyway."

Spinelli glanced up from his magazine just in time to see a troubled look on Sonny's face. "You don't believe in love, Dragon?"

"Not really, no." She raised a brow superciliously at him when he did the same to her. "What, after listing all the things that we medicate ourselves into, you think I'm going to believe that love is a genuine emotion that can't possibly be manipulated by chemical factors?"

He gave her a blank look and then returned to his magazine. "You're a stupid Dragon."

Elizabeth shrugged again and Jason wanted to throttle her. "If something as core to our 'self' as the brain can change every single time we see something or talk to someone, does something as core as 'love' really have a chance?"

She was speaking mainly from experience now, and Sonny was the only one who knew so from the beginning. "If you can go to the hospital and find yourself sitting in front of the psychiatrist and have her prescribe you a whole long list of pills that will help you go to the bathroom, that will help you not feel depressed, that will take away something as vital and human as your pain, that will increase your brain activity, that will help increase your mobility, that will help you control your anger and your impulsive urges like ripping the IV tubes out of your arms and running away from everything-"

Elizabeth paused, out of breath, and cleared her throat. She'd almost forgotten herself for a minute. "If you can go to the doctor and get a whole long list like that, what does that mean? It means that all the twisted, deranged, complex, wonderfully fucked up things that make us human can all be eliminated, and we can all be boiled down to 'normal levels,' to the least common denominator."

She shuddered visibly. "And if all those emotions can be boiled down to the least common denominator – if all those emotions can just cease to matter, if they can come and go with something as simple as swallowing one pill or another – what makes you think that love should be any different?"

She didn't need to make her point any more clear, but Elizabeth couldn't resist adding one more visual image. "If I can go to Dr. Winters at General Hospital again and ask her to give me a pill to fall in love – or feel in love – and come back the next day and say that I want a pill that'll do the exact opposite, how much does love really mean?"

Spinelli eyed her carefully. So carefully, in fact, that he missed the troubled look on his beloved mentor's face. For his part, Sonny couldn't even bring himself to look at Jason. He just sat in his armchair, hunkered behind the first page, and felt horrible for being right.

As always, Spinelli could be trusted to break the most uncomfortable and tense silences with finesse and ease. And if not that, then volume and a peculiarly endearing talent for bumbling. "So you were really prescribed all those pills?"

Elizabeth rolled her eyes bitterly. "All those and more. Every color you could imagine, too. A tiny, round, plastic rainbow in a paper cup every morning."

"And you hated them?" he queried unnecessarily. "Even the pain medication?"

"Oh, yeah," she nodded. "Never, ever take pain medication if I can help it."

Spinelli's green eyes glittered with amusement. "And yet you had no problem drugging Stone Cold's soup, orange juice, or Gatorade."

Elizabeth's smile turned sly as she played with Jason's large hand and lined his fingers up with hers. "Well, sure. I hate seeing anyone else in pain, so I'm sure to medicate them out the wazoo if it helps them feel better."

Jason muttered something uncomplimentary, prompting her to tilt her face up and give him a sassy look. "What? Can you honestly tell me that if our situations had been reversed and I was the one with a bullet in the leg-"

"God forbid," Sonny murmured.

Elizabeth spared him a gentle look. "Can you tell me that if our situations were reversed, you wouldn't have done the same and drugged me until I slept it all off?"

Her smile grew at Jason's scowl. "I thought so."

Spinelli just laughed and flipped another page, pausing to ogle the new Sony PDA. "You and Stone Cold might as well be the same person."

Her jaw dropped. "Are you trying to be insulting?"

He gave her a sickly smile. "Always."

Elizabeth glared at him as Spinelli set down his magazine and picked up another section of the paper, and she would have lunged for him if Jason hadn't put his hand flat on her stomach and held her back, whispering something in her ear. She quieted down reluctantly and settled against him, but still shot the nerd withering looks.

Spinelli, for his part, tried to concentrate on the section of the paper he had randomly grabbed from the table, but it was hard to do with Stone Cold and the Dragon cuddling on the couch like that. Really, was nothing sacred anymore?

Stone Cold was stroking her hair – gag – and the Dragon was playing with his hand, and their legs were hopelessly tangled together on a couch that suddenly looked a bit small, and all of it was just a little more than Spinelli could bear.

So he did what any boy his age would have done and decided to put an end to the disgusting display of his wonderful, trusting mentor being mauled by a cunning Delilah.

"So the Quartermaines and the Webbers are pretty close, huh?" he asked loudly, meeting Jason and Elizabeth's annoyed stares directly.

Elizabeth nodded slowly. "Yeah, my grandfather and Jason's grandfather went to college together, and Jason's grandmother and mine went to an all-girls' school together. My dad and Jason's dad were born around the same time and played together as kids before the Quartermaines moved to their current house. Plus, AJ and Steven went to the same prep school and were on the football team together."

Spinelli nodded as if truly interested. "And they've done a lot of business together over the years, too?"

Jason arched a sandy brow. "Uh, yeah. Edward used to be a doctor and then he went for his MBA. Grandmother's Pickle Lila relish was his first ELQ product and he built it up from there. They've been marketing things for the medical community for years, and Edward has dozens of subsidiary companies and that sort of thing."

"So between the Webbers and the Quartermaines, they've got quite an empire."

Sonny's obsidian eyes darted from one party to the other, as if this were a tennis match, as he followed the peculiar conversation.

Jason and Elizabeth nodded slowly. "…Yeah."

"They're pretty well-heeled, then."

They were staring at him as if he'd lost his mind. "…Yeah."

Spinelli pretended to tap his chin thoughtfully. "And they've both got only a couple kids to pass that money down to, right? Steven and AJ don't count because they're illegitimate, and Sarah and Emily don't count because they're girls and will probably marry well, anyway."

His gaze grew wicked as Jason and Elizabeth squirmed. "So, really, they'd probably be pretty happy to know that their little Jason and their little Elizabeth are together. In fact, they're probably dreaming of that spring wedding and hoping for a bunch of little Stone Colds and little Dragons running around so that they can send down inheritance and trust funds galore."

Spinelli smiled broadly as Sonny covered his mouth with his hand. Jason and Elizabeth had gone ashen. "Can you imagine? Out of all the people in town reading Page Six these past few days and learning about you two nesting and going on romantic weekend getaways, the Quartermaines and Webbers were the ones most united in their singular desire to see you spawn."

As if he hadn't messed with them enough, Spinelli leaned forward conspiratorially and winked at his mentor. "You know, make babies. Be fruitful and multiply. And then multiply some more."

Jason and Elizabeth stared at him with nothing short of sheer panic on their faces. And while Elizabeth's panic was over the thought of getting married and having babies, Jason's panic resulted from his suddenly realizing that he wanted to.

"I gotta get something from my penthouse," he announced, standing so suddenly that Elizabeth almost fell.

"I left some of my coconut on the balcony," she declared.

Sonny calmly watched the two bolt in opposite directions and scatter. When both the balcony doors and the front door had slammed – with a little more force than necessary – he turned to Spinelli and did his best to look stern.

"That wasn't very nice."

The boy glanced up from behind the comics. "Yeah, but it got them to stop that cuddly crap, didn't it?"

After a long pause, the mobster shrugged and picked up his front page once more. "Can't argue with you there."


	34. Chapter 34

_Previously – Jason terrorizes Spinelli with visions of his sexual escapades; Jason thwarts Luke's profitable plans; Jason and Elizabeth are 'ambushed' at the art show by the Quartermaines and Webbers; upon finding themselves on Page Six, Jason and Elizabeth hightail it to Canada for a romantic weekend getaway; Elizabeth, Jason, Sonny and Spinelli laugh it up when they learn of the Quartermaines and Webbers' misfortune; Elizabeth reveals her warped reasons for not believing in love; Spinelli terrorizes Jason and Elizabeth with visions of wedding vows and babies, inadvertently giving Jason a rude awakening._

**Note – **Thank you for the truly wonderful replies.

Hack | 34

Jason's strides were jerky and quick as he rushed across the hall to his penthouse, eager to put as much space between him and Spinelli's talk of wedding vows and little Stone Colds as he could. He ignored Max as he passed him – hell, if he were honest with himself, he'd admit that he didn't even _see_ Max – and practically kicked open the door of Penthouse II. No sooner was it open than he was inside and kicking it shut with admirable force.

He slumped against it, letting out a slow, forceful breath in a draining _whoosh_. As the air left his body, it felt like his strength did as well. Jason banged the back of his head against the wood, sagging now, and asked himself not for the first time just what was wrong with him.

But really, the question wasn't even about what was _wrong_ anymore: it was about what felt so damn _right_ that it just knocked the wind right out of him.

His heart was still hammering in his chest as Spinelli's words repeated in his head, and try as he would Jason just couldn't shake them out. But admittedly, he didn't try very hard. Because he didn't want to pretend as if they'd never been said. And nothing could have scared him more.

_Be fruitful and multiply. And then multiply some more_.

Fuck.

He cringed. Unlike almost every other time, that particular word didn't help very much.

Feeling like a caged animal, out of breath and anxious, Jason pushed himself away from the door and walked forward, unsure of where he was to go. His hands were jittery and he stilled them by clasping them together, and that was when he spotted the balcony. Perfect. It was a cool night, and he could use a few minutes of clean, fresh air to clean his mind and calm his nerves.

Jason scrubbed his hands over his face and stumbled past the pool table and out the balcony double doors. His noisy entrance disturbed Derrida and the other doves who had just come back to roost.

_Be fruitful and multiply. And then multiply some more._

God, if only.

Jason laughed to himself and shook his head briskly. And if he wasn't imagining it – and in his delirium, he probably was, god damn it – he would have sworn that the birds tittered in amusement as well. Ah, hell, they were probably just irritated with him for disturbing them, the fucking winged rodents.

He had no idea when it happened – absolutely no idea when the thought of settling down with one woman and sustaining a meaningful relationship and raising a family ceased to be a thought and became a dream of his. An aspiration. A goal.

No. A need.

Jason swore under his breath and leaned his hip against the ledge, looking out over the rest of the town. In the distance, he could see the twinkling lights from Quartermaine Manor. God, if his grandfather only knew of the kinds of thoughts swirling around in his head right now, Jason was sure the old man would die of happiness on the spot.

It hadn't always been like this. He'd been as carefree and independent as any other man his age when he left Port Charles. It was business at first, then a severe case of wanderlust, that kept him away from home so long. And somewhere along the way, he'd found a scrappy little vagabond named Spinelli and the two of them struck the oddest partnership.

And for the first time in his life, Jason Morgan found out what it was like to be needed.

Sonny needed him, he knew that. But their relationship was different. It was more of a partnership, a mutual alliance, and at the end of the day Michael Corinthos and Jason Morgan were independent, self-sustaining loners who just happened to have profound respect and mutual admiration for one another.

With Spinelli, he knew what it was like to wake up in the morning to someone that needed to be fed. Someone that needed to be safe. Someone that needed stability. Someone that needed understanding and affection and care. And someone that relied on him for all those things.

He always thought that he'd dealt with that very well, that sudden fact of being _needed_. He'd always made sure that Spinelli was fed, clothed, clean, safe, and relatively happy. After a few months, it ceased to be so awkward and it ceased to be a struggle. Going out of his way to care for his young friend became second nature.

And for his part, Spinelli gave Jason a lot of things. What he gave him most was a sense of stability, a firm grounding. Because no matter what, several things were constants. They had to eat at least twice a day. They had to sleep at night. They had to stay together. And they had to stay safe.

He couldn't get away with being reckless and as much of a free spirit anymore, not when he had someone that depended on him and dogged his steps and, hell, modeled his very character off of him. And so Jason stopped. He simply stopped being careless with his life (because now Spinelli was a part of that life); he stopped picking fights just for the fun of it (because those fights might get Spinelli hurt or worse); he stopped aimlessly roaming from one place to another and picking up at the drop of a hat (because Spinelli needed to know the game plan and needed a sense of constancy and a routine as best as Jason could provide).

And four years later, here was Jason Morgan, feared mob enforcer, standing barefoot on his balcony at one in the morning, discovering that it had been the best change in his life, and that he never again wanted to go back to being that self-centered, reckless, carefree loner.

Far from it. He wanted _more_ stability, _more_ constancy, _more_…dependents.

What he wanted now was a wife, children, a home, a family, a routine, a life.

And no one was more surprised about it than he was.

_This_ had to be what Sonny was talking about when he asked him if he was on the same page as Elizabeth. Sonny knew – he had to have known. What else would have prompted him to ask such a personal question?

Sonny also knew something else: that Elizabeth didn't share this goal, this need. She was a young woman very focused on her independence, her fun, and her career. She had made a whole life for herself here, and Jason doubted very much that she'd be easily convinced to give it all up and play house with him.

And that was the kicker. Even as he kicked the balcony ledge, causing the doves to squawk indignantly, and swore, it still made Jason laugh. That was the kicker: he didn't just want those things. No, he wanted them with Elizabeth.

Unable to stand his newfound sentimentality, Jason swept his arm across the wide cement ledge, the back of his rough hand brushing soft white down. The doves shrilled and scattered, taking flight and soaring up off the ledge in a perfect crescendo. He watched them, envied them their alliance and same-mindedness, and then stalked back into the main room.

Spinelli hadn't come home yet. The penthouse was always so still when the kid wasn't around. Jason swept a gaze around the room and scowled, heading for the stairs. He stomped up to his master bedroom, not sure what he was planning to do but retiring there all the same. The room was dark when he entered but he didn't bother to switch on the lights.

Instead, he pulled the curtain cord and yanked the rich taupe drapes back, back, back, until the moonlight streamed in and he had a clear view of the night sky. Now he could see the residential district of Port Charles, far removed from the waterfront and the upscale district.

_Be fruitful and multiply. And then multiply some more._

He had to be the biggest jackass in the world.

Really, there was no other word for a man like him, a man that wanted sentimental, sappy things like he did despite knowing all the while – from the beginning, really – that he couldn't have them.

At least, not with this particular girl, the same one that referred to a man and his bride as 'married idiots.'

And that was the worst part, that he'd known this from the beginning. When he first laid eyes on Elizabeth Webber, when he first held a conversation with her, when he first spent time with her alone, he had known this wasn't the type of girl he wanted anything long-term with. She was too short, too loud, too opinionated, too bossy, too territorial, too proud, too strange.

He'd been blinded by the fact that her unique extremes made her perfect for him.

It had been a learning process, for her as well as him, he had to think. A seasoned enforcer and world-weary traveler, Jason thought that he had known all he needed to know about women. He thought he knew about kisses and touches and smiles and fights and late-night lovemaking.

But falling for Elizabeth taught him that he'd been nothing but a green boy. No one had ever kissed him like she did, sometimes brutally and sometimes reverently, and sometimes a beautiful combination of the two. No one had ever touched him like she did, hard and soft, squeezing him and running just her fingertips over him in a touch so light that he sometimes wondered if he had imagined it all.

No one smiled quite like her, either. He could read so much in one of her smiles, smiles he knew she thought were inscrutable to the rest of the world. He could read her mischief, her wicked humor, her self-deprecation, her wonder, her heart. He could feel her heart in their arguments, too. Forget the fact that she was one of precious few women that he stuck around with long enough to actually have an argument – she fought him with everything he fought her with, and she never let him off the hook with a defeated shrug, as he was used to. Perhaps that was what made them such a good match – such an even match.

And never in his life had the sex been this good. It was such a cliché to him, but there it was. He'd slept with scores of women all over the world and was well versed in scores of techniques and scores of ways to extricate himself after the deed was done. And normally, it was his experience that sex started out incredible and then fizzled out, and that was when the talking and connecting started, and that was when he was already long gone.

With her, the sex had started out incredible. And then instead of fizzling out, it just became…surprising. New. They found ways to keep it interesting, often times without even trying. He'd never forget the time she bound him to the headboard with the same handcuffs he'd been planning to use on her; he still shivered when he remembered the time she blindfolded him with her bra – always cotton, almost always white – and did a hundred wicked things to him with her fingers and her lips and her tongue; he got a constant thrill from thinking back to the time she let him take her in front of a mirror, even to this day, several weeks after the fact; and the memory of her pulling him down to the lush carpet of her main room and letting him make love to her behind the sofa was still so vivid that it gave him hot chills.

And somehow, all of her extremes and all of her best qualities and all of her surprises rolled and meshed together in his mind until he looked down at her one morning when she was reading the paper in his lap and just _knew_ that she was the one.

That he'd gone and fallen in love with her, and he hadn't even known he was doing so.

Jason had told himself a million times – more increasingly after their first few weeks together, actually – that this was just sex. That there was no need to search for excuses to make it more. That there was no reason to _want_ more, period. He'd told himself a million times that he could have sex with a woman he found devastatingly attractive and not develop any feelings for her. It would be so easy, and after all, he'd done it successfully in the past more times than he had fingers and toes to count them on.

But he'd fooled himself, and then he'd betrayed himself.

To say nothing of how he'd fooled and misled and misread _her_. Just like that night at Jake's when he asked her to play a game of pool only to be blown off by her belief that he couldn't stand her, Jason had misread her.

Elizabeth didn't want any of the things he was realizing he actually did. She didn't think of his kisses and his smiles and his touches the way he thought of hers. She actually _was_ successful in separating the feeling of love from the act of love. She had him beat on all counts. She remained blissfully ignorant, blissfully independent, and wretchedly unhurt.

And if he kept things up with her the way they were now, sex whenever they felt like it, midnight rides that lasted til sunup, and casual Sunday mornings spent lounging on the couch with coffee and the paper, he was going to be misleading her.

Because the whole time, he knew he'd be thinking of how right it felt, and how much he wanted another day of just _this_, just _her. _He'd be thinking of how to prolong each moment, how to steal just one more kiss, how to hold her in his arms a little closer to forever and whisper words that had been entirely foreign to him before her.

And she would be thinking that they had a great thing going and shouldn't ruin it.

Inevitably, he'd be fooling her into thinking that her happy little delusion of a great no-strings-attached relationship was real when he knew the exact opposite to be true.

God damn, he was fucked. Because he suddenly wanted these things, and he was all alone in his wanting.

He turned away from the window and his gaze fell on a painting hung squarely in the center of the block of moonlight he'd let in. It was the painting of Jake's, done by the masterful, inspired, and underage hand of Georgie Jones, that Elizabeth had fallen in love with. And instead of putting it up in her penthouse the way she'd planned, she'd given it to him.

Jason groaned and flopped down on his bed.

Talk about mixed signals; this was what encouraged his heart every time his brain reminded him of his circumstances.

And Jason wanted to regret everything that led up to the mess he was in; he liked to think that if he could go back and do it again, he'd want to do it differently; he tried to hold on to the belief that this was all a terrible misfortune that had befallen him.

But he couldn't do any of those things because he _didn't_ regret falling in love with her, and he _didn't_ want anything to be different, and he knew that whatever _this_ was, it was the single greatest thing he'd ever created, ever been tricked into, ever embarked on.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The next morning, Penthouse VI…

Elizabeth had just come downstairs after showering and getting dressed when there was a knock on the door. She made her way over to it and pulled it open only to find Spinelli casually leaning against the doorjamb, eating a banana with writing on the peel.

She blinked. "Uh…what?"

He swallowed his mushy mouthful. "Salutations, Dragon."

"Did you write on that banana?"

Spinelli glanced at the fruit. "Oh, yeah. But this isn't just any ordinary banana. It's my To Do Banana."

Elizabeth's brows jumped. "What?"

"I write all my early morning To Do items on the banana peel," Spinelli explained, letting her see his itinerary. "As I eat the banana, I walk around and make sure I do everything on the list. By the time I'm done eating, it's time to throw the banana away. See?"

He turned the half-eaten fruit upside down so they could read. "_Answer Jackson's email before class_. Already did that. _Add milk to the grocery list_. Already did that. _Ask Silent Sentinel to drive me to the library after class._ I already did that. _Go to Dragon's Lair of Doom and rescue Stone Cold."_

Spinelli righted the fruit and took another big bite. "So, here I am, needing to speak to that boyfriend of yours."

"He's not my boyfriend," she replied, more out of habit than anything else. "And you seem pretty calm about this. I thought you hated the fact that Jason and I are together."

"The visuals give me hives, to be sure," he admitted. "But believe it or not, I've decided that I can handle your most unnecessary alliance as long as I don't have to _see_ it. Or, you know, hear about it. Or, basically, be informed of its existence."

"How magnanimous of you," she murmured as he let himself in and turned around. "But I don't know what you're doing here – Jason didn't stay here last night."

Spinelli stopped mid-chew. "You sure?"

Elizabeth spared him a humorless look. "He's kind of hard to miss."

He shot her an annoyed look. "Well, he wasn't at the penthouse last night. Or maybe he was, and I was sleeping and missed him when he left."

Without a second thought, he grabbed her hand and pulled her out into the hall. "Let's go ask the Silent Sentinel."

Max looked up curiously when he saw them coming. "Hey, Spaghetti, Toothpick. You guys need something?"

"Silent Sentinel, have you seen Stone Cold?" Spinelli asked. "The Jackal was of the belief that he spent the night in the Dragon's Lair, but she has informed me that he didn't. Do you know where he is, or if he already left?"

Max's dark eyes darted nervously from the right to the left. "Uh, I don't know how to answer that question. Why don't you ask Mister Corinthos? I'm sure he'll be happy to answer your questions."

Elizabeth opened her mouth to set Max straight when Spinelli patted her arm, quieting her, and reached for his pocket. "Never mind, I'll just call him."

They all waited as he punched in the speed dial option and listened. With a small frown, Spinelli flipped the phone shut and slipped it back into his pocket. "Maybe we'd better go ask Mister Corinthos after all: Stone Cold isn't picking up."

"What do you mean, he's not picking up?" Elizabeth demanded, whipping out her own phone from her pocket. "That idiot _will_ answer my call."

Spinelli gave her a long look that lacked all amusement. "Yeah, he didn't pick up for his grasshopper; you really think he's going to pick up for his not-my-girlfriend?"

She glared at him and waited as the phone rang. "He better if he knows what's good for him."

He rolled his eyes and pushed past her into Sonny's penthouse. "Whatever. When it goes to voicemail, you know where to find me."

Elizabeth almost chucked it at his head, but managed to control herself. Not wanting to leave a message, she shut her phone off and headed in after Spinelli.

"Mister Corinthos Sir?"

"Sonny!"

The man in question looked up to find two young adults in his living room, one respectfully inquisitive, the other as mad as a hornet.

"I'll talk to the one that doesn't look like she wants to break something," he announced.

Spinelli gave Elizabeth a superior look and took a step forward. "Mister Corinthos Sir, it appears that the Stone Cold one has flitted off on winged foot, and the Dragon and I would very much like to know if you can verify this."

Sonny squinted at him. "I'll talk to the one that I can understand."

Elizabeth elbowed Spinelli in the ribs and advanced on her guardian. "Sonny, where the hell is Jason?"

The man actually winced, which stunned Spinelli. "Ah, well…"

The brunette glowered. "Sonny…"

He scrubbed a hand over his face. "Okay, I got a message from him about an hour ago. He said that he needed to take off for a little bit, and he'll be back in a while."

Both Spinelli and Elizabeth stared at him. "Hello? Specifics?"

Sonny just shrugged. "That was his message verbatim. You know Jason – he doesn't talk."

Elizabeth muttered something uncomplimentary under her breath but snapped out of it when Spinelli jabbed her in the shoulder.

"What did you do to him?"

She stared at him as if he'd lost his damn mind – which, really, when dealing with Spinelli, wasn't out of the realm of possibility. "What do you mean, what did I do to him? I didn't do anything to him!"

"Then why did he run away?" Spinelli frowned. "You must have done something to him."

"For God's sake-"

Sonny reached out and wrapped his arm around Elizabeth waist just split seconds before she lunged at him. "Okay, okay, none of that. Spinelli, Elizabeth didn't do anything to Jason; you know better than most people that he sometimes needs to be alone. And Elizabeth, we do not lunge at Spinelli."

Spinelli tipped his chin up in the air and waited until Sonny let her go, then followed Elizabeth out of the penthouse. Before they split in the hall and headed to their respective apartments, he jabbed her in the small of the back.

"I know you did something to him."

~*~*~*~*~*~

She had to be the biggest moron in the world.

Really, there wasn't any other word for a stupid girl like her, a stupid girl that complained and bitched about her almost-live-in partner that hogged the bed and snored and drooled and ate all her food and stuck her with his dumb nerd friend – a stupid girl like her that complained about all that, and then missed said almost-live-in partner when he was gone.

Moron.

And really, what was Jason's problem, anyway? He had just picked up in the middle of the night and left without any consideration for anyone, least of all her.

Seriously, did he care that she was bored out of her mind without him? That the penthouse was suddenly so empty and still and lonely without his large, stupid, hulking form lounging on the couch or taking up most of her bed?

And did he care that her fridge and pantry were practically overflowing, filled to capacity at the very least, because true to her mildly obsessive-compulsive manner she kept making food and baking things and without him around to eat it all practically in one sitting, the food was just sitting there? Did he care?

And did he care that she couldn't fall asleep at night without the sound of him snoring right in her ear?

Did it matter to him that she had to put up with the nerd one-on-one now, without him as the usual buffer? Sure, Sonny filled in occasionally and sat between them on the couch when they were watching reruns of Columbo, but it wasn't the same.

Also, she was antsy. And sentimental. And stupid. And frustrated.

And it was all that stupid moron's fault.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Columbo isn't what it used to be when I was a kid."

Elizabeth looked over at Spinelli. "Columbo is the greatest TV detective of this time slot."

He shrugged indifferently. "I'm just saying. He's not that great."

"He doesn't carry a gun, I don't think."

"It's just so predictable."

"And he has that weird voice. That Peter Faulk voice. Well, obviously, because he is Peter Faulk."

"I mean, they show the bad guy at the beginning of every episode, like clockwork."

"I mean, if I was being interrogated or accused of murder by a guy that sounded like Peter Faulk, I wouldn't be able to take him seriously at all."

"They take all the fun out of it."

"I'd be like, shouldn't you be tying on a few at the local bar and making a pass at the middle age female bartender instead of running around acting like a detective?"

"They should have Columbo go insane and like, whale on some guy."

Right now, Sonny Corinthos wanted nothing more than to 'whale on some guy,' mostly because the kids were driving him insane. He glared at the backs of their heads from his seat at the dining table where he was currently catching up on his mail.

It was always this way. Spinelli and Elizabeth each had perfectly good penthouses of their own where they could watch outdated detective shows and make their inane comments, but for some reason they always chose his penthouse to commandeer. They'd march in, plop down on the couch, take the remote from him even if he was actually watching something important, and sit and make stupid comments until he wanted nothing more than to kick them out.

But he never kicked them out.

That was the sad part.

He sighed again, affected by the futility of it all, and begrudgingly got out of his seat when his desk phone rang. Both Elizabeth and Spinelli wagged their hands anxiously in the vague direction of his desk; the ringing was no doubt hindering their ability to make disjointed, asinine comments about an outdated detective. Their hand gestures became more frenetic as Sonny walked over, but both hands immediately fell to the couch with a plunk when he picked it up and put an end to the infernal ringing.

"Yeah."

He paused, listening to the voice on the other end and glanced over to see if the kids had noticed. "Yeah, no, that's fine, no rush. Take your time. Do – Do you need anything? A car? A couple of the guys?"

Another pause.

"Well, I was just thinking that since you took your bike, you might be – no? Okay. Yeah, yeah, I'll do that now. Okay, take-"

He frowned at the phone when he heard the dial tone. "…Care."

Spinelli and Elizabeth looked over at him suspiciously. "Who was that?"

"What did they want?"

Sonny ignored them and placed a call to Benny, taking his time as he did so. The kids hadn't lost interest by the time he was done, and Sonny knew he wouldn't be able to shake them off.

"That was Jason."

Their eyes widened, and Columbo was instantly forgotten.

"That was Jason?" Elizabeth's lips had parted with surprise, leaving her looking like an hour. "Really? He called you? Just now?"

Sonny nodded.

"What did you do for him just now when you were talking to Bernie?" Spinelli wanted to know.

"I was talking to Benny."

"Oh, you know as well as I do that they're interchangeable."

"Jason wanted me to wire him some money," the mobster shrugged. "I took care of it."

"Why would he need money?" Spinelli asked, looking at Elizabeth. "He's always got his credit card, and he carries some cash on him."

Sonny tugged on his ear awkwardly, a gesture he'd picked up from his best friend. "Well, sometimes he gets into situations that require…lots of cash."

Spinelli's green eyes widened. "You mean strippers?"

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and smacked his arm just a little harder than she normally would have. "No, idiot, Jason doesn't do strippers."

He shot her a superior look and smirked. "Oh, he does them, all right."

She bristled and skewered him with a fierce glare. "Not any more, he doesn't."

"Spinelli, stop baiting Elizabeth," Sonny murmured absently, rearranging the files on his desk and setting a small stack aside for Jason. He could take a look at them when he got back. "Go back to watching your show. Jason's fine, he just…got into a little scrape and had to pay off a few people for some damage he caused, but he's just fine."

Elizabeth worked her jaw and regarded him carefully. "Did he say when he was coming back?"

Sonny looked at her, then slowly shook his head. "Uh, no, he didn't. You know, I could call him back right now and ask. He'll take my call. You know, I'm going to do that-"

"No, don't bother," the brunette replied brightly, taking the remote from Spinelli's lap and increasing the volume. She flopped back on the cushions and threw her legs over his lap again. "He'd have called me and told us when he was getting back if he wanted to. No big deal, don't bother him. Spinelli, your nerd head is in the way; you're blocking Peter Faulk."

She waited silently until Spinelli and Sonny bought her rouse and went about their business. Sonny returned to the table to look through his mail and Spinelli flopped back on the other side of the couch and continued to comment on Columbo.

Elizabeth barely heard him, however, because she was already imagining a million 'scrapes' that Jason could have gotten himself into, and a million things he could have done to cause all that damage that Sonny was talking about. And then she started thinking about _why_ he would cause all that damage.

And then she started thinking that it just sucked real bad that he never even bothered to pick up the phone and call her.


	35. Chapter 35

_Previously – Jason addresses his newfound desires; Sonny tells Elizabeth and Spinelli that Jason left town; Elizabeth reluctantly misses Jason; Jason calls Sonny for cash and Elizabeth is saddened that he never bothered to get in touch with her._

**Note – **Thanks for the lovely feedback!

Hack | 35

Day five without Jason.

And Elizabeth was…messed up.

Uncharacteristically so.

She missed him. She wasn't quite so terrified to admit that anymore. Not that she had ever once said it aloud, to be sure. But she figured that being able to admit it to herself was progress enough.

She missed the big hulking oaf.

She missed seeing him every day – several times a day, in fact – and she missed the sound of his voice and she missed the way he took up her whole couch when he was watching the game and she missed the leather-and-evergreen scent of his cologne and she missed the way he always ordered double portions for himself when they ordered in and she missed the way he smiled and she missed the way he practically crushed her ribs as he held her when they slept at night.

Elizabeth could now safely admit that to herself (maybe even say it in the tiniest of voices if no one was in the penthouse, not that she had tried it yet).

And it scared the living crap out of her.

The simple fact was that she wasn't supposed to miss him this much. She just wasn't.

The only person she was supposed to miss this much if he'd been gone for almost a week was Sonny and thankfully, her guardian never left her alone that long. His business trips lasted two or three days at the most, and then he was back home and she was always exceedingly glad for that because she hated not seeing Sonny regularly.

She never even missed Nikolas this much when they had been apart for long stretches of time, and she loved Nikolas. (Yes, she was able to finally admit that now that she was positive it was a case of profound affection of the platonic nature, and that it was reciprocated.) His royal and business obligations often took him back to Greece and Russia, among other places, several times a year and sometimes for weeks at a time. She always went about her business as usual and just found him whenever he got back.

It had certainly never been anything like this.

God, she just missed him so much. And she was turning into one of those simpering, weak, sentimental women that she always mocked and treated with such derision – that was the worst part! Seriously, what kind of woman (like her) felt herself falling to pieces whenever her guy wasn't around? She had never, ever wanted to be one of those women. But here she was.

She was cranky and stressed out and mopey; she yelled at Spinelli at the drop of a hat; her appetite had diminished; and even her trips to Jake's didn't help her. She always ended up leaving early, anyway. And she knew that it was only partly because she missed Jason, and mostly because she was stressing about the fact that she missed Jason.

She'd worked herself into a fine mess. It was vomit-inducing, really.

And that was how Sonny found her when he let himself into her penthouse: bent over the toilet, puking out her lunch. She had a pesky habit of vomiting whenever her stress levels got too high. It was pretty annoying, not to mention disgusting.

He was at her side immediately, pulling her hair out of the way and gently stroking her back until she was done. Sonny quickly handed her a wet washcloth so she could clean up and waited while she pulled out the disinfectant wipes and then disposed of them.

"Are you all right?"

She tried to smile, but his obsidian eyes remained worried. "Yeah, just a bug, I guess."

Sonny started to nod, but then stopped and gawked at her as if he wasn't quite sure how to say what came next. "Is there any chance that you're…pregnant?"

Oh, God, she was going to be sick again.

Sonny swore lightly under his breath when she vomited again, backing off when she waved him away and wiped her mouth. The loud flushing sound almost drowned out her muffled words as Elizabeth wiped her mouth with the back of the hand and reached for her toothbrush.

"I'm not pregnant."

"Are you sure?" He didn't look too convinced. "Because, you know, you could be. We should go to the hospital. I'll get Max. MAX-"

"Sonny!" Clearly out of patience now, Elizabeth glared sharply at her beloved mentor. "I'm not pregnant, and I'm positive of it. Can we just drop it now?"

He nodded jerkily, looking as if he wanted to reiterate that she _could_ be, but he wisely decided against it. "Sweetheart, what's wrong? You haven't been this sick in a long time. Since…"

"Since Sandoval took shots at you, me and the guys in front of Kelly's and Johnny and Max went missing for two weeks," she recited dully. "Yeah, I know. Don't worry about it – it's just a bug. I'm positive," she added tightly when she saw his eyes narrow.

Sonny held up his hands and backed away. "Hey, you can't blame me for thinking it."

Elizabeth sighed wearily and pulled the cap off her mouthwash. "No, I can't. I'd probably think the same thing if I were you. But I'm fine. Just a little stressed out."

He slipped his hands into his pockets and did his best to sound nonchalant. "Any particular reason?"

She shrugged. "Just a bunch of little things, I guess. Plus, the bug that's going around. I guess it all got to me at once."

Sonny nodded wisely. "Yeah, that can happen to a person."

If she had the feeling that he wasn't quite talking about stress and illness, Elizabeth ignored it. "…Can I ask you something? About Jason?"

His brows rose, but Sonny managed to nod casually. "Yeah, sure, sweetheart."

She rinsed her mouth one last time and spat. "Did he do this before?"

"…What are we talking about, specifically?"

Elizabeth scrubbed a hand over her face, prompting Sonny to wonder if she had unconsciously picked that trait up from her not-quite-boyfriend. "Did he just pick up and leave abruptly, whenever he felt like it, without telling you or anyone else?"

The answer came far too easily. "All the time."

Sonny regretted his reply when he saw her shoulders slump. "Er, but you have to remember, sweetheart, that was the old Jason."

She arched a brow at him as only a woman could. "I wasn't aware we were dealing with the New and Improved Jason. The prototype is lacking."

His expression became peevish, but lightened when she smirked. "You know what I mean."

She set her toothbrush down on the countertop with a smack, a little louder than she had intended. "Actually, I don't."

Sonny sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Jason's grown a lot over the years," he started, picking his words carefully. "When he was young, back when he first started working for me, he…"

His eyes glittered as he tilted his head. "He reminds of you, the way he was back then, and how you used to be."

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed. "How so?"

Sonny shrugged. "Excitable, I guess. Quick with his emotions. It used to get him into a lot of trouble, but we dealt with that okay." He laughed and stroked his chin. "I was always paying someone off to look the other way when Jason caused some damage or started fights. He kept things interesting, that's for sure."

He leaned his hip against the counter. "Elizabeth, that was the old Jason. He never wanted to be tied down to a person or a place. So, yeah, he used to pick up and leave town on his bike all the time. I'd get calls at three in the morning saying, hey, I'm in Atlantic City and…"

Sonny's eyes flicked to her unamused sapphire orbs. "Uh, forget it, it's not appropriate."

"I'll bet," she muttered dryly.

"Anyway, that was what he used to do. It was his thing. We all expected it, so he never really took us by surprise. We all knew how to get along without him, and if something came up that meant we needed him home immediately, he'd break all kinds of traffic laws to get here as fast as he could. He was very dependable and loyal in that sense, so it balanced out."

He cleared his throat and regarded her seriously. "But, sweetheart, that's not who he is anymore. It's been nine years since the accident. He's had nine years to grow into himself, and he's settled into something he likes, something that works for him. He doesn't need to run off and start fights and break things anymore to prove a point. He's done a lot of growing up. So if you're asking me if we can expect him to run off in the middle of the night now, then the answer is no. He probably just needed to clear his head, and he'll be back when he can and hopefully that'll be it. He's not that kind of guy anymore."

She nibbled her lip like a child trying not to get his or her hopes up. "What changed him, do you think?"

A light glowed in Sonny's eyes, but he kept his smile in check. "Well, I think some of it was Spinelli."

Elizabeth looked away and nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense."

His smile grew, slow and superior. "…But I think most of it was you."

And then, when her jaw had practically dropped to the floor, Sonny turned on his heel and strolled out into the hallway, his smile still firmly in place.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Milo eyed Sonny suspiciously as the mobster strolled into his penthouse, whistling a jaunty tune.

Sonny _never_ whistled a tune.

Much less a jaunty one.

He held the door for him and waited as Sonny sauntered on in and headed straight for the wet bar. "You, uh, need me to do anything for ya, Boss?"

He shook his head. "No, no, everything's fine. Tell you what, Milo, come on in. Have a drink with me."

Well, this was just messed _up_.

Milo eyed his boss and then the door. Maybe it would be better to leave it open. So he carefully propped it back and then entered, walking over to stand by the armchair. "You, uh, seem to be in a good mood today."

"I am, I am," Sonny smiled to himself as he got out two glasses and pulled out a bottle. But then he thought better of it and put it back. "No, no, we'll have the good stuff. Better get out the good stuff."

He abandoned the wet bar and headed over to the fireplace, then remembered himself at the last minute and glanced at Milo. "Turn around."

Milo blinked and quickly did as he was told. In the background, Sonny could be heard pulling a few bricks loose, and then he heard the clink of a glass bottle. By the time he was told to turn back around, whichever bricks blocked off the cask, Amantillado-style, as Elizabeth would say, had been firmly replaced.

"Scotch," Sonny announced proudly. "As old as Elizabeth is."

Milo's eyes widened. "Wow. I don't think I've ever had anything that old."

"It's excellent stuff," Sonny affirmed, pouring him half a glass and handing the libation over. "Gotta keep it hidden."

The guard smirked. "Because of us guards?"

His employer shot him a wry look. "Because of Jason. He'd finish it off in a day if he had the chance."

Milo actually laughed, then took a sip of the scotch. It burned all the way down and left him coughing.

Sonny nodded appreciatively. "Good, huh?" He took a sip and then lowered his glass, sputtering. "We should make a toast. Drink to something."

Milo spit out the sip he'd just taken back into the glass. "Uh, okay."

"What should we drink to?"

The guard's eyes darted from side to side. A brain scan for his boss?

Thankfully, Sonny wasn't waiting for an answer from him. "I got it," he announced, clinking his glass to the young man's. "Here's to being wrong."

"To being wrong," Milo echoed weakly.

Dear God, _everyone_ was cracked.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Sonny was wrong.

Of this, Elizabeth was convinced. She adjusted her grip on the brillo pad and angled the soiled oven pan. He was wrong. It was just that simple. It had to be that simple. She didn't exercise nearly as much power over Jason as he liked to think. Hell, he made Jason sound like some James-Dean-wannabe that had been tamed by her gentle touch. Blah. How disgusting. So Sonny was wrong, and that was that.

Nikolas, however, was right.

Elizabeth sighed wearily, then resumed her scrubbing with renewed vigor. She didn't like replaying their conversation from that night at Jake's but she couldn't get it out of her head now. He had said something about how it was very hard to separate sex from feelings, especially when there were only two people involved.

And damn him, he was right.

Because here she was, trying to do everything to distract herself from missing Jason and then making herself sick because of that. It was pathetic, really. And very untrue to her character. In the past six years, she had prided herself on keeping her life – her new life – neat and tidy. She had her slots and her compartments and her little mental bins for everything. Work. Friends. Family. Fun. Society. Everything neatly marked off and stored away.

And then Jason had come and messed up all of that. He fit in so many of those neat mental bins. He was her friend. He was her lover. He was her boss, technically, kind of, even though she'd never admit that she worked for him. He was her guy around the town, the one she always went out with when she needed to drag someone out with her. And he was, quite simply and quite inexplicably, family.

And if she was even remotely close to being the woman she had thought she was, she would have hated that she let him into every facet of her life the way she had. But the sad part was that she didn't, because she honestly couldn't imagine her life as she wanted it now without Jason lurking around and lounging on her couch and eating all her damn food.

The fact remained that she liked Jason just where he was.

And that was the operative phrase: right where he was.

She couldn't afford to let him become more than what he already was. And she would have to work really, really hard to make sure he stayed exactly where he was, for all their sakes.


	36. Chapter 36

Previously –

**Note – **Elizabeth is NOT pregnant. I'm just going to come out and say it. I never intended to do any baby story in Hack, and that hasn't changed. I just felt that "are you pregnant?" was a question that Sonny WOULD logically be provoked to ask. Plus, it serves to illustrate that the Quartermaines and Webbers aren't the only ones thinking about little Stone Colds and little Dragons. ;-)

God, I'm such a creep.

Hack | 36

"Dragon?" Spinelli noticed her door was ajar and called out to her as he headed over to Penthouse VI. "The Jackal is in the mood for fish tacos. You wanna make a trip out to Call Me Delishmael?"

But when he poked his head into her penthouse, Spinelli saw that Elizabeth wasn't alone. Ritchie, dressed in jeans and a comfortable brown polo, was folding and unfolding a map on the couch while Elizabeth set her sunglasses primly atop her head.

"What's going on?"

They looked over at him, and Spinelli noticed matching duffel bags sitting on the floor between the coffee table and the couch.

"Ritchie and I are going on a road trip," Elizabeth announced, snatching the map from her favorite guard and folding it up the right way. "We're tired of sitting around, so we're going to drive around New York, maybe over to Vermont and New Hampshire, and get some of that famous butter pecan ice cream."

"We like butter pecan ice cream," Ritchie supplied in a dry, dutiful voice that told Spinelli the guard didn't particularly care one way or the other about the aforementioned butter pecan ice cream.

Spinelli's eyes darted between them as Elizabeth hefted her duffel bag. Ritchie, too much of a gentleman to let a woman carry her own load, quickly relieved her of it and grabbed his own as well. "You're leaving now? Why now? What's the rush? Go to the grocery store and buy that ice cream – Stone Cold should be coming home any day now!"

Elizabeth snorted and picked up the map and her purse, neatly sidestepping Spinelli on her way to the door. "If Jason can pick up and take off whenever he feels like it, so can we. Ready, Ritchie?"

"Ready," the guard nodded. "I'm going to take these down to the car."

"I gotta say goodbye to Sonny," she returned, tipping her chin at Spinelli. "See you when we see you, nerd."

~*~*~*~*~*~

At a bar in upstate New York, about an eight hour drive from Port Charles…

Jason wasn't sure how this particular conversation had started. Maybe it was a 'hey.' Maybe it was a 'hey, gimme a beer.' Or maybe, and he thought this one was the most likely answer, it was, 'hey, you remind me of a kid I know.'

He didn't really talk to bartenders very often aside from getting directions or giving a drink order, but this one really did bear a striking resemblance to Spinelli. And after his fifth beer, the guy might as well have been Spinelli as far as Jason was concerned.

"And I guess this trip worked, because I did actually figure stuff out," he drawled, his voice slurring only slightly. "You know what her problem is?"

The young man arched a dark brow and regarded him with serious green eyes while polishing a glass. "Elizabeth's?"

Jason nodded. "She has a problem with intimacy."

Not-Quite-Spinelli nodded. "Ah."

"She does," he insisted. "She can't deal with intimacy, not at all. It's like she just can't process it. And really-" He paused to let out a burp behind the back of his hand. "I shouldn't blame her. I mean, fuck, I should have known better. That was me a few years ago, you know?"

Not-Quite-Spinelli nodded again as if he truly understood and agreed.

"I totally see where she's coming from," he mused, the far-off look in his eyes caused by equal parts wistfulness and alcohol. "She's looking at this and thinking that we've got a great casual thing going, and there's no need to ruin it by letting it get out of hand. Sex is sex."

"It is," Not-Quite-Spinelli agreed, mainly because he thought he should. After all, this guy had purchased five beers over the course of the night and tossed a $100 bill at him. He'd agree with whatever the hell came out of Mister Jason Morgan's mouth.

"And there's no need to ruin sex by getting anything else mixed up with it," Jason continued. "We had those rules for a reason, you know."

"Rules are rules."

"Like, we weren't dating. I couldn't spend the night at her place. She couldn't drag me out to shop or watch one of those damn operas or whatever the hell it is women want to do. She wouldn't wait up for me if I was out late. We could both still go to Jake's and drink and play pool. We had those rules for a reason."

He shook his head ruefully. "You know, Spinelli was right."

The mirror-image nodded again.

"He said we were the same person." Jason pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a sigh. "I never really stopped to think about it until now, but he's absolutely right. Elizabeth and I are like the same person. We're both so used to closing certain things off and doing things a certain way. Hell, we're both so used to being the one Sonny counts on when things go wrong. And we both respond to things the same way."

Not-Quite-Spinelli's head bobbed. "Sure, sure."

Jason let out a sigh and closed his eyes. "I'm just gonna have to figure out some way to deal with this."

When he opened his eyes again, they were more focused. "Listen, you've got rooms upstairs, right? One of 'em free for the night?"

The young man nodded and searched under the counter for a key. "Sure, you pretty much already paid for one earlier. Why don't you take…"

He handed the key over to Jason. "Room number seven. It's the…third door on your…left."

Jason's eyes narrowed as he stood. "Are you high?"

The bartender gaped at him. "Excuse me?"

The enforcer shook his head and ambled over toward the stairs, muttering something under his breath as he went. Not-Quite-Spinelli, whose real name was Caleb, watched him until the older man disappeared up the stairs and then turned to one of his regulars who was occupying a stool a few seats away from Jason's.

"Did he just say that Afternoon Dee-lite has a slowing effect on…people?"

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Mighty Odysseus has returned home!" Spinelli cheered as Jason wearily trudged out of the elevator and onto the fifteenth floor of Harborview Towers. "The Odyssey is over!"

Max arched a brow at him. "If he's Odysseus, who are you supposed to be? Penelope? Or was it that Helen of Troy whore that he was doing?"

Spinelli glared at him but didn't dignify the question with a response. Instead, he quickly moved forward to take Jason's bag and ushered him into Penthouse II. "Stone Cold, the Jackal was most thrilled to get word of your imminent arrival from Mister Corinthos Sir this morning. How were your Travels with Charlie?"

Jason frowned. "I don't know anyone named Charlie. And even if I did, I wouldn't travel with him unless I had to."

"No, no, it's a book," Spinelli replied. "Never mind. How was your trip? Where did you go? How's America's hat, our fair neighbor to the north? Did you see a mounty? Do they really put maple syrup on everything? You didn't eat any butter pecan ice cream, did you? I hear it's all the rage."

Jason waved away his questions. "I didn't go on a trip. I just went for a ride."

"Yeah, a ride that lasted for ten days," Spinelli snorted, matching Jason's dark glare with an admirably defiant look. "So? Are you hungry? The Jackal has taken the liberty of ordering in from Kelly's and Eli's and Me Feed You Long Time Chinese. What's your preference? I figure we can have the leftovers for dinner-"

"I'm not that hungry," Jason muttered, tossing his jacket onto the couch and heading for the door. "I have to go."

"Are you going to see Mister Corinthos Sir?" Spinelli asked, following him to the door. "Because he knows you're coming back, but he's at the warehouse right now and said if you came over in the interim, to tell you that he'll see you as soon as he gets back. So you don't have-"

"I'm not going to see Sonny," Jason called over his shoulder as he headed for Penthouse VI. "I have to see Elizabeth."

Spinelli's shoulders slumped and he let out a sigh as his mentor disappeared around the corner. "Yeah, who didn't see that coming?"

Boy, that Dragon sure knew how to get her hooks in a guy. His wonderful, fearless, stalwart mentor had been reduced to a love-struck teenager thanks to her. And the worst part was that the Dragon didn't even appreciate what a great man Stone Cold was. She treated him like her little boy toy, and it made Spinelli sick. Jason deserved much better than that.

But he figured it was, after all, Stone Cold's life to live. If he wanted to spend all of his time mooning over the cunning Delilah, the Jackal couldn't save him. All he could do was warn him that he was about to get a haircut.

Spinelli had just settled back on the couch, preparing to spend the rest of the lonely afternoon by himself, when Jason came stomping back into the penthouse. It didn't take a genius – although Spinelli considered himself one – to see that Stone Cold was pissed.

"She's not there."

He nodded slowly. "Uh, yeah, the Dragon stepped out a little while ago."

Jason's eyes flashed. "When?"

"Er…" Spinelli swallowed. "About three days ago?"

His beloved mentor let out a string of decidedly impolite words. "Where the hell did she go?"

"She and the Muscular Sentinel went out to get butter pecan ice cream."

"Three days ago?" Jason snarled.

"Er…they wanted to get it from…Maine. Or Vermont. Or…New Hampshire."

A lethal pause. And then, "Are you high?"

"What? No!" He ran a hand through his hair and tried to explain. "Look, the Dragon decided to take the Muscular Sentinel out for a road trip of her own and she left three days ago. The Jackal told her that such action was most imprudent what with your imminent any-day-now arrival, but she wasn't to be stopped and they left. And I haven't heard from her but Ritchie checks in with Mister Corinthos Sir, so she's fine."

Jason kicked the wastebasket that peeked out from under his desk and watched as it skittered across the hardwood and toppled over. He sucked in a deep breath through his nose and ran a hand through his hair, trying to think.

He wanted to talk to Elizabeth. He had wanted to go over there and see her and apologize for running off without calling her, and then he wanted to explain that he just needed to get some air and clear his head with a ride. Well, actually, no, he hadn't _wanted_ to do any of those things because apologizing to Elizabeth was a chore, but he felt he needed to.

And on top of that, he'd really missed her. She was the woman he loved, after all. It was only natural that he'd miss her, even though it had been his decision to put some distance between the two of them.

Elizabeth had apparently had the same idea, because she put distance between them as well.

He let out a low growl and rubbed the back of his neck, trying to work out the kinks. Spinelli stared up at him from the couch, and the boy brightened exponentially at the next words out of Jason's mouth.

"So…you wanna go do something?"

~*~*~*~*~*~

That night, at a bar in upstate New York, about an eight hour drive from Port Charles…

Elizabeth had no idea how this particular conversation had started. Maybe it was a 'hey.' Or maybe it was a 'hey, gorgeous.' Or maybe it was a 'hey, gorgeous, how about a Jack and Coke?' Or maybe – and, really, this was the most likely one – it was a 'hey, you look like a stupid nerd I know.'

As far as bartenders went, this one looked a _lot_ like Spinelli. Same floppy mess of brown hair. Same big stupid green eyes. Same dopey face.

And this same bartender had served her three pretty stiff Jack-and-Cokes, and Elizabeth was pleasantly buzzed. Not drunk – after all, enthusiasts would know that she was a very calm, placid, reticent drunk. But when she was buzzed, she talked. And talked and talked and talked.

So while Ritchie hung around by the pool tables and hustled the locals, she talked to her dopey Bar Nerd.

"And he broke all my rules," she huffed, slamming her empty glass down on the counter and motioning for him to refill it. The Almost-Nerd did as he was bid. Most men around her usually did. "Can you believe it?"

"Well, rules are meant to be broken." This chick hadn't paid him yet, so Almost-Nerd figured he didn't have to agree with everything she said yet.

"Not these rules," she insisted. "These rules were very clear. He couldn't stay at my penthouse after we'd fooled around. He couldn't spend the night. He couldn't give me cutesy nicknames or call me his girlfriend. We didn't buy each other things. We didn't talk about our problems. I didn't have to wait up for him every stupid time he stayed out late. I wasn't going to stop hanging out with the guys, and neither was he. And we weren't going to sleep with other people."

His stupid nerd eyes regarded her seriously. "Did Jason sleep with other people?"

"What?" She shook her head vigorously. "No, of course not. That was the only rule he didn't break!"

Elizabeth shook her head and took a big gulp of her drink. "Honestly, it's ridiculous. Everything's going along great, right? And then the idiot starts breaking my rules. He falls asleep in my bed, for one thing. All the freaking time. He just used to sleep there, like he owned the place."

"Maybe you just have a nice bed."

"I do," she agreed, "but that's no excuse. And then he started spending the night. _Even when we didn't do anything._"

Almost-Nerd nodded sympathetically and resumed polishing his tumbler.

"And then, you know what he does? He starts hanging out at my place." She nodded emphatically, still stunned by the lunacy of it all. "He eats there. He watches the game. He reads the paper. What the hell is he doing in my place? Why doesn't he just leave?"

"Maybe you have a nice place," the Almost-Nerd shrugged. "I had a girlfriend once that had a really, really nice place. It always smelled nice, too."

"And then – oh, _then_ the idiot starts talking about his problems," Elizabeth continued, not even hearing him. "In bed. Can you believe that? And then before I know it he's giving me stupid gifts like this red glass thing-"

The Almost-Nerd laughed. "Okay, glass? This guy's gotta be a real cheapskate. Who gives a girl glass?"

Elizabeth scowled at him. "Listen, lay off the glass. I loved that gift." She tossed her hair over her shoulder and gave him an arch look. "Plus, it turns out he hates when I use hair spray and hair gel and that sort of stuff and somehow, he got me to stop using it! I don't even use it anymore, and I have no idea why! And then he's calling me honey and we're spending all our time together, and then the stupid nerd with his stupid nerd face had to go talk about Quartermaine-Webber babies, just to scare him off, I think, and now he's gone and he's a jerk and I don't even know what he's thinking."

The Almost-Nerd set down his tumbler and looked her directly in the eyes. "He thinks you have intimacy problems."

Elizabeth's lips parted in surprise. "What? Who does?"

"Jason," he replied. "Jason thinks you have intimacy problems."

She frowned at him, trying to understand what he was telling her. "Jason-"

"Yeah, Jason Morgan," the Almost-Nerd said impatiently. "He was in here last night bitching and moaning about some chick named Elizabeth, which is obviously you. Yeah, real chatty guy."

Elizabeth's jaw dropped as she stared at him, and then her cheeks turned pink, and then red, and then she wanted to hit something. She searched for the best word, the best comeback to throw in the nosy Almost-Nerd's face but the only thing that came out that was actually English was a furious "Ooooh!" and then she got up from her seat and stomped over to Ritchie to inform him that they would be seeking better lodging for the night.

The Almost-Nerd, whose name was still Caleb, frowned and turned to one of his regulars seated a few stools away. "Did I hear that right? Did she just call me a stupid nerd?"


	37. Chapter 37

Previously – Jason talks to a Not-Quite-Spinelli; Jason comes home and Spinelli is sad when he immediately goes to see Elizabeth; Elizabeth talks to an Almost-Nerd.

**Note – **Thank you for the lovely feedback. My plan right now is to finish this story as fast as I can, and then move on to How To Fix Everything, the sequel to the Battle of Who Could Care Less, which is almost done (and a Solo Ensemble Exclusive Fic). And then I plan to finish up the rest of my stories one by one til I have none left. Then I probably won't start anymore, but we'll see what happens.

Hack | 37

Sonny and Spinelli watched as Jason crammed the last of his ice cream crepe into his mouth and almost broke the dish when he smacked it down onto the table. Then it was time for his late night cup of coffee, and the enforcer almost spilled a bunch on the ivory tablecloth when he wrenched the carafe off the rack and sloshed some into his black mug.

"He's pissed."

"He's in a bad mood," Sonny whispered back. "Try to ignore it. He just needs to stew a little."

"But when he's in a bad mood, he doesn't like to be ignored," Spinelli hissed as Jason drew closer. "It makes him feel like we're trivializing his anger."

"Then what should we do?"

"Hide? Maybe behind the sofa? He'd never see us."

Sonny rolled his eyes impatiently. "I'm not hiding from Jason."

"It's always worked well for me."

"Well, you have reason to hide: you're annoying."

Spinelli's jaw dropped. "The Jackal resents that remark!"

"Mm," Sonny murmured, taking a sip of his coffee. "He resembles it, too."

"The fuck are you two whispering about?"

"Nothing," Sonny and Spinelli answered in perfect unison. And then they went about trying to ignore Jason without trivializing his anger the best they knew how. And while they did this, Jason sat on the couch with his coffee and scowled at the wall, clearly savoring his foul mood. In any event, Spinelli thought he wore it well.

And maybe this bad mood was just what was needed for Samson to free himself from the cunning Delilah.

The boy was just delighting in those wonderful thoughts when there was a bit of a commotion in the hall and before he knew it, the door to Penthouse IV was practically kicked open by a tired but beaming Elizabeth.

"We're home!"

Sonny dumped his paper on the table and shot out of his seat, crossing the room in long strides to sweep the brunette up in a bear hug. "Hey, sweetheart. How was your trip? Where did you go? Are you hungry?"

"Our trip was great," she smiled back, her arms still around him. "It was really fun – we had a great time together. We stayed in New York for the most part, and Ritchie showed me some of the really cool towns way up in the northeast area that he knows. One of them was a nineteenth century historic town, which was pretty cool."

She peeked over Sonny's shoulder and smiled at Spinelli. "Hey, nerd."

The boy offered her a mock two-finger salute. "Gulliver has returned at long last. How were the Lilliputians?"

"Little," she joked, playing along. "Did I miss anything these past few days?"

"Well, Stone Cold came back," Spinelli said unnecessarily, tipping his head at the surly man standing with his arms crossed over his chest.

"So he did," Elizabeth replied lightly. She smiled when Ritchie gestured to the door, letting her know he was going to get going, and kissed his cheek before he left. Then, slipping her hands casually into her pockets, she walked past Jason and sat down on the armchair right across from his seat on the couch.

"So, Jason, how was your trip?"

His lips thinned, but Jason knew that two could play her game. In fact, this was what they did best: the stop and go, push and pull. The simple retaliation.

"Fine. How was yours?"

Elizabeth offered him a tight smile. "Pretty nice. Where'd you end up going?"

He rolled his shoulders. "Around. You?"

"Same." She whisked her bangs out of her face and gave him what she hoped passed for an innocent look. "Heard you got into a little scrape and were short on funds."

His lips twisted, but Jason nodded. "Yeah. Happened at a bar across the border."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." A muscle in his jaw ticked, making Spinelli gulp. "A few guys started hassling a couple of women and things got heated. I jumped in along with a couple of the locals and we ended up causing some damage."

Her expression softened. "Oh."

And then whatever he had seen flickered away and she blinked, breaking the spell. "So where else did you go?"

"Around."

"I hear it's nice there this time of year."

Sonny coughed and tried to disappear behind his paper. This would not end well, and it didn't appear that either Jason or Elizabeth was prepared to give an inch. Wonderful. As if the neighbors didn't complain enough…

"Well, Ritchie and I went to a bar."

Jason arched a sandy brow. "Ah."

She pursed her lips. "Yeah. It was nice enough. Did you end up going to any other bars?"

"A couple."

"You'd have liked this one," she replied flippantly. "It would have been just your scene – just the kind of place you'd like to haunt."

"Yeah?"

Elizabeth nodded primly. "Oh, yeah. Low-key. Dim. Local joint."

"Hm."

"You should check it out. It's about eight hours outside of town."

It couldn't be. "…Eight hours."

"Yup. It's the kind of bar where they…know your name."

His eyes narrowed. "Uh-huh."

"I especially liked the barkeep."

"Really."

"Yeah. He reminded me of someone I know."

A muscle in Jason's jaw ticked. "Huh. Perceptive guy, I bet."

This time, her eyes narrowed. "Oh, he definitely was."

Spinelli had been watching all this with rapt fascination, and now he cleared his throat and hesitantly stuck his toe into the water. "…Are you guys fighting?"

"No," Jason and Elizabeth both barked at the same time.

Still scowling, Jason stood up and cracked his knuckles, glaring at Spinelli as he jerked his head toward the door. "Come on, get up, we should get back."

He waited until Spinelli got up and ambled out the door, then turned over his shoulder and gave Elizabeth a look. "See you at breakfast," he mocked before stepping out into the hall and softly shutting the door behind him.

It was only then that Sonny dared to peek out from behind his paper. Imagine the odds: He'd actually ended up hiding from Jason after all.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Are you ever going to tell me what's wrong?"

Elizabeth scowled at the cobwebs she was currently dusting off the mantle. "Nothing's wrong."

"Okay, now you're just insulting my intelligence."

"Hm, I thought you'd be used to that by now."

"You know, for a prince, I sure have to put with a lot of abuse from the commoners."

"It's the start of the revolution, your Highness."

He rolled his dark brown eyes and followed her around her living room as Elizabeth dusted off her end tables. Dust made Spinelli sneeze, and he was always hacking and wheezing away whenever he came to her penthouse if the room was the least bit dusty, and she was fed up with it. And that meant dusting so that the stupid nerd could actually breathe when he came over.

"Alright, Elizabeth, level with me. You've been in a disagreeable mood these past few days, and everyone's noticed it. So what's wrong? Is Sonny riding your case about something?"

"No, he's fine."

"Did you lose another challenge to Spinelli?"

"No, I'm ahead by two now. Just won one yesterday."

"Oh. Congratulations. So are you annoyed with me or the guys?"

"No, you're all wonderful."

Nikolas let out an exasperated sigh. "What, then?"

She paused in the middle of her dusting and actually fiddled with the duster. Elizabeth rarely fiddled with anything, so that was cause enough for Nikolas to pay attention. "I'm kind of…in a fight with Jason."

A short pause and then, "Ah."

Elizabeth glared at him. "Don't sound so surprised."

Her old friend just shrugged. "It's not that, I was just thinking that I should have guessed."

"Gee, thanks."

"No, I meant that you said everything else was fine – us, Sonny, the challenges. I should have figured out what the next most logical answer was. So what are you two fighting about, if I might ask?"

"I don't know."

He arched a dark brow at her turned back. "When did you start fighting?"

"I don't know."

He tilted his head to the side as she flopped down on the couch, then walked past her and behind it. "What's stopping you from talking it out and making up?"

Another sigh. "I don't know."

A small smile made his lips twitch, and Nikolas did his best not to laugh at his dejected friend as she sat slumped over on the couch. Instead, he coughed right into his fist – a cough that sounded suspiciously like the word 'relationship.'

Elizabeth must have thought so, too, because that was when the young woman got up from the couch and did something she had never done to Nikolas before: she leapt over the back of the sofa and tackled him.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Jason couldn't remember the last time a woman had him in this bad a mood for this many days.

And the worst part was that he couldn't even blame it on her because it wasn't her fault: it was his. These were his issues that were causing him to be such a damn grouch, and she was just responding with anger of her own, which was the only way she knew how to respond at all.

God, he was fucked.

He had been puttering around the penthouse in a huff for several days now. He hadn't taken Elizabeth out on a bike ride since he got back. He hadn't spent the night at her penthouse. He hadn't taken any of his meals at her place. And the lack of sex was only enhancing his supremely grumpy mood.

He had no idea what to do with his feelings for her. If he was any kind of man at all, with any dignity and self-respect at all, he would have marched his ass over to her penthouse and told her they needed to end this. Breaking up would be the best option if he wanted to nip this where it was without hurting either one of them any more. It wasn't her fault that his needs had changed; hell, she didn't even have any idea. And for a commitment-phobe to continue seeing the hopeful family man was just a disaster waiting to happen.

But as it turned out, Jason was realizing that he wasn't 'any kind of man at all,' and that 'dignity and self-respect' had been the first things to go when he fell in love with Elizabeth. Was it like that with all men? He remembered back to when Sonny was happily engaged to Brenda and reflected that it probably was. God, it was like his best friend had been replaced by a Pod Person.

Jason started and practically hopped off the couch at the thought. Spinelli, who was sitting over by the pool table, noticed his unease and questioned him silently with his eyes, and Jason almost opened his mouth right then and there and asked Spinelli if he thought a Pod Person had replaced him, too.

God damn, this was insane.

Jason scowled at the boy, who quickly went back to his assignment for his challenges with Elizabeth, then flopped back down on the couch. A long time passed in silence, and then Spinelli hesitantly spoke up.

"Stone Cold?"

"What?"

"The Jackal was thinking that since it's still early and we haven't had any dinner yet-"

"There's food in the fridge."

Spinelli stopped and glared at the back of his beloved mentor's head. "There so isn't."

Jason scowled. "Fine. We'll order in."

"Actually, that brings me to my point," the boy interjected. "The Jackal was thinking that since he and the Stone Cold one are both hungry and in desperate need of distract- er, entertainment, we could maybe go out and shoot pool at Jake's and then head over to Eli's and get some honey-barbequed ribs and see what happens from there. What do you say?"

"I hate honey-barbequed ribs."

"Don't get them, then," he shrugged. "I'll get those, and you get your normal ribs. What do you say? We could take the bike out and-"

"I'm not taking the bike out. It needs repairs."

"Fine, then we'll take the car, and-"

"You're _not_ eating ribs in my car."

"I'd let you eat ribs on my segueway."

"Spinelli, I'd never eat ribs on your segueway."

Of all the things he never thought he'd hear himself say…

"But I'd still let you," the boy insisted.

"The two of us wouldn't even fit on your segueway."

Spinelli's lips settled into a peevish line. "You're being difficult on purpose."

"I'm not."

"Look, Stone Cold, just because you're in a pissy mood that the Dragon is showing her immature colors doesn't mean that you get to-"

"Jason."

They both looked over as the door to Penthouse II was practically kicked down (they'd all gotten into the worst habit of not knocking) and saw Elizabeth standing framed in the doorway with her hands planted on her hips.

Jason arched a brow, prompting her to scowl and stalk forward.

"You need to get something straight," she informed him primly. "I don't know what you're PMS-ing about here, but you need to get over it."

Spinelli's face contorted in disgust. What kind of thing was that for an almost-girlfriend to say? The Dragon knew that Stone Cold was upset, and she should have known that Stone Cold wasn't the sort to get upset over nothing, and so it followed that she should at least treat him with a modicum of understanding and consideration, to say nothing of how he _always_ treated her that way.

Jesus, his mentor sure knew how to pick 'em. And Spinelli was beginning to _profoundly _regret accidentally scaring away that Belgian supermodel because, really, anything was better for Stone Cold than this.

Jason seemed to think the same thing as he glared up at her. "Excuse me?"

"You need to get over it," she replied simply, shrugging her shoulder. "And so do I. Because this was supposed to be fun, remember? And right now, it's not fun. Not at all."

And then to the boys' mild surprise, she leaned down and cupped Jason's rough cheek, her voice becoming softer and gentler. "Didn't we have fun?"

Spinelli rolled his eyes, wondering how stupid a man would have to be to fall for a line like that.

As it turned out, there was no need to wonder because much to Spinelli's shock and dismay, Jason let out a gruff sigh and nodded. "Yeah. We did."

Elizabeth smiled and straightened, confident that she'd swayed him back to her side. And really, that was all that mattered. Or that was what she told herself, at any rate. But as she looked down at Jason, glad that they'd sorted this out, she couldn't help but notice the tense, dejected set of his shoulders and the grim look in his eyes. He was still troubled by something, and she'd bet good money he wasn't anywhere close to telling her.

Surprising no one more than herself, she leaned down and took one of his large hands in hers. "Hey."

He looked up at her in surprise, obviously not expecting the gentle gesture at all, and Elizabeth tried not to feel a flicker of hurt that he hadn't.

"You eaten yet?" She tugged on his hand when he shook his head, succeeding in pulling him to his feet. Flashing him a small smile, she turned and held hands with him behind her back, leading him to the door. "Come on, I'll make you dinner."

Jason appeared stunned but quickly got over it and followed her out, pulling the door shut with the toe of his boot. Spinelli, still over by the pool table, watched this exchange and bristled at the ease with which the Dragon kept Stone Cold wrapped around her finger.

Really, it was getting to be a bit too much.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Penthouse VI, down the hall from Spinelli's bad mojo…

She'd set out a little bowl of stuffed olives for him to munch on while she made dinner, and Jason popped two in his mouth at once as he watched her fuss with the tray of lasagna she'd loaded into the oven thirty minutes ago. He had a good feeling that the tray had been heavier than even she was, it was so laden down with every last ingredient he ever thought could be included in lasagna. Hell, she'd even sliced up a fat eggplant and layered it over the ground beef. And now she was working on the rolls, making sure to bake a few extra because she knew how he practically inhaled them.

And for some reason, this pleased him.

She set the oven timer for ten more minutes and wiped her hands on the dishtowel, her back toward him. She hadn't said much over the past half hour, which was okay because he hadn't said anything at all. All Jason had done was sit there and watch her and wonder just what the hell he was going to do.

He already knew that being away from her made him miserable, and no matter how much breaking up seemed like the smart thing to do, he doubted he could actually get those words out.

Maybe he'd have Spinelli do it for him.

Jason almost laughed at that. He had no doubt that Spinelli would get on that immediately and tell Elizabeth six ways to Sunday that the Stone Cold one was done dealing with the fire-breathing Dragon, or however it was that the kid would have phrased it. In fact, he had the distinct feeling that Spinelli would enjoy that.

But Jason also knew that this was his life, his decision, and he couldn't pawn it off on Spinelli no matter how appealing the idea was. Elizabeth cared about him, he was sure of it. She listened to him when he was stressed about something, she always waited up for him when he came home late from a hit, she tried her best to help him with his problems in her own, secret way like she had when Spinelli's birthday crept up on him, and even now she was making him dinner because she sensed that something was bothering him and she wanted to make him feel better.

She did care about him. But the fact remained that she didn't love him, and she probably wouldn't ever love him the way he loved her. The chance that she'd change her mind about their situation was a very small one and frankly, Jason wasn't willing to stake anything on it. Elizabeth liked to be in very firm control of her own life – just like him – and he couldn't see her willing to merge hers seamlessly with his.

So he'd have to tell her that he cared about her a great deal and that he really had a great time when he was with her, but this wasn't working and they should probably call it off and go back to the way their lives were before that hot summer day when the AC broke down and prompted them to broker this ridiculous deal.

Yeah. That was exactly how he'd say it.

Maybe he'd leave out the part about the 'ridiculous deal,' but the rest of it was good.

He watched her wistfully as she set about cleaning up the mess she'd made and disinfecting the counters. It seemed such a shame to end this, in all honesty. He knew he had to, but that didn't mean that he was okay with it. In time he'd accept it, and he hoped that in time he'd move on. He'd just have to, because there was nothing for him here.

She raised her hand to tuck a loose tendril of hair behind her ear, and Jason noticed for the first time the large clip she wore to pull back her chestnut waves. An ornate design in blackened silver that boasted an amulet-style adornment in the center: his red glass.

Something warm and mysterious began to spread through his chest as Jason watched her through narrowed eyes. Mere minutes ago, he'd been willing to bet that she'd never change her mind about wanting more with him.

But…

…If she gave him any small signal, any little sign at all, that maybe she one day might, he'd call off the imminent breakup.

Jesus Christ, now he was bargaining with himself.

But the sight of that red glass, still fully intact, holding back her thick hair was enough for Jason to excuse his ridiculous sentimentality – just for this evening – and wonder a little. If she gave him any small signal, any little sign at all…

She turned over his shoulder, as if hearing his thoughts, and gave him a small smile. "Hey."

Jason lifted his chin. "Hm?"

Her eyes narrowed, but the smile remained. "You sure you're okay?"

He nodded, not trusting himself to answer, and popped two more olives in his mouth.

"Because you're very quiet," she noted, slowly making her way closer until she was standing next to the tall wooden chair abutting her kitchen island.

"I'm always quiet."

"Not always," Elizabeth teased. "But more than you usually are."

"Just thinking," he replied quietly.

Her eyes softened and she looked for a minute as if she wanted to ask him what he was thinking about, but Jason didn't think she'd take that leap. And she didn't. Instead, Elizabeth nibbled on her lip and touched his chin lightly, then dipped her head down until her lips brushed his.

She kissed him slowly, softly, not seeming to need much of a response from him at all. Her nose bumped into his as their lips coupled, and Jason fought the urge to reach out and pull her close. Something told him that she needed to do this, and that he needed to let her.

Something also told him that this was the sign he'd been hoping for.

Elizabeth pulled back slowly, the corner of her mouth hooking up when she saw that his eyes were still closed.

There. She'd done it.

She'd kissed him just for the sake of kissing him, and the world hadn't come to an end. She'd kissed him just because she felt like it, just because she wanted to make him feel better, just because she thought he needed a little comforting, and not because she expected something – ahem – to follow, and they were both still here. And they were both okay.

Elizabeth tried to keep her smug smile in check. Oh, yeah, she could definitely do this.

"I'm fine," he murmured in a rusty voice, his breath fanning over her lips because she had yet to straighten. "I am."

She nodded and their noses rubbed together lightly. "Good."

Jason smiled softly when he felt her trace his lower lip with her thumbnail. She had the oddest fascination with his mouth – probably like he did with her hair.

Her voice dropped to a whisper, hardly more than a breath. "I missed you when you were gone."

Jason stilled, and then she stilled, and he knew she would have dropped her hand and backed away right then if he hadn't slipped an arm around her waist, pulled her close, and kissed her chastely on the mouth just because he thought she'd let him.

"I missed you, too."

The simple admission alleviated the unease that had radiated off her just seconds ago, and Elizabeth smiled bashfully and cleared her throat. "Next time you want to leave, could you at least call me?"

He nodded sincerely. "I will," he promised. "I…I really didn't plan on leaving town, you know."

Elizabeth turned questioning sapphire eyes up to his.

"I didn't," he felt compelled to repeat. "I was at home, about to go to bed and I just…had to go. So I did."

His grip around her waist tightened just a little. "I don't plan to make a habit out of it."

That got a smile out of her, and Elizabeth nodded again. "Good."

That same feeling from earlier, all warm and unfamiliar, began to spread through him again, through his chest and his stomach and right out to the tips of his fingers as Jason brushed his lips against hers again. She actually let him, but that was ceasing to be such a surprise to him anymore.

He'd gotten his sign.

And though he'd never been a believer in signs and omens and horoscopes and wishes, Jason was more than willing to believe this one. Because something had just shifted between them, he was sure of it, and something told him that after whatever had transpired just now, he needed to hang in there. If things worked out the way he wanted, it would all be more than worth it.

He could both hear and feel her breath at the same time as he held her loosely between his legs, and Jason nudged her with his nose. "Elizabeth."

Her name fanned out across her lips, and all she could do was respond with a dreamy, "Mm?"

The corner of Jason's mouth twitched. "Something's burning."

Elizabeth's eyes shot open. "Oh!" she yelped, spinning around so fast that she nearly banged her elbow on the edge of the island. Jason smiled to himself as he watched her dart over to the oven and rescue her lasagna, and popped two more victory olives into his mouth.

He could definitely get used to this.


	38. Chapter 38

_Previously – Elizabeth and Jason inform Spinelli that they are NOT fighting; Nikolas gets himself tackled when he makes a casual observation; Spinelli is upset to see how easily Elizabeth manipulates Jason; Elizabeth and Jason kiss and make up. Awww._

**Note – **Thank you, as always, to everyone who leaves me feedback. Also, news flash: I am really starting to worry about myself, especially when every time I write the word "who," my fingers automatically add "-re" to it without my even thinking about it, thus forcing me to go back and delete every time I want to write a simple, stupid word like "who." Crap! I did it again. :|

Also, AJ is played by Sean Kannan and not Billy Warlock, and Emily is played by Amber Tamblyn and not Natalia Livingston.

Hack | 38

"How bad is it, do you think?"

Sonny's grim eyes met Jason's stoic ones. They were both in full-on business mode, a far cry from ten minutes ago when they were having a good time teasing Spinelli about his cream-and-pink plaid shorts.

"It's going to get a hell of a lot worse real fast, I can tell you that much," the mobster answered. "Alcazar's not happy that you eliminated Tagliati's enforcer and that we took over half of Don Salvatore's territories as punishment."

Jason nodded and took a seat on the couch. "Are we looking at any sort of time frame?"

"Right now, I'm just hearing rumblings," Sonny admitted. "Tagliati called me this morning and said he's doing his best to weed out all turncoats in his organization because he's been hearing that Alcazar is out for revenge and is planning something drastic."

"Nothing specific yet?"

He shook his head. "Unfortunately, no. We should get the kids on it, ask them to keep their eyes and ears open for any information they might be able to find. Stan and the others, too. A lot of the times, it's the guards that find these things out first."

Jason nodded. "Yeah. Talk to Ritchie and Johnny first, then Milo and Max. Tell them to spend more time at the warehouse."

Sonny knew where he was heading without Jason's even having to continue that thought. "Right. That way, they'll be able to keep their ears open for information and also find anyone that might be willing to turn on us. I'll call Stan up right now and let him know."

"What do you need me to do?"

"Right now?" Sonny glanced over his shoulder as he reached for the phone. "Nothing. I just wanted to let you know that the situation might escalate, and then I'll need you to take action immediately."

Jason's eyes flashed. "And get rid of Alcazar."

His partner nodded. "We won't have much time to plan it if it goes down that way. Not like the hit on Paolo. You'll probably have to go out _that night_ to take care of it."

The enforcer didn't look too worried. "I can handle it."

"I know you can," Sonny replied. "But remember, it'll have to be a very clean operation because Alcazar's got contacts with the government. And besides that, he's already paranoid. He's got hidden cameras all over his estate that record to external hard drives ready to be shipped to the right people at a moment's notice if anything happens to him."

Jason was about to issue the same bland statement – not to worry, he could handle it – when there was a knock on the door of Sonny's penthouse and Elizabeth poked her head in. She smiled when she saw the two men, not realizing they were in a business meeting, and directed a mock scolding look at her almost-boyfriend.

"You promised me a ride," she informed him, wagging a finger playfully. "I'm here to collect, Morgan."

Jason glanced at Sonny, who nodded.

"Sure, sure, I don't want to keep you," the mobster said, his hand still discreetly on the phone and ready to make that crucial call to Stan. "You guys go, have fun."

Jason got up off the couch and grabbed his keys from the desk, then let Elizabeth pull him out the door.

"Just be careful," Sonny added quietly as he stepped out into the hall. Jason nodded firmly and gently pulled the door shut behind him.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It was late by the time Jason and Elizabeth got back from their ride, as well as an impromptu trip to Kelly's where they'd caused quite a stir by actually daring to eat out together in public and look as if they were enjoying each other's company. No doubt their entrees would be listed in detail on Page Six the next day.

Spinelli, who had eaten with Sonny, was still lounging around in the mobster's penthouse by the time the couple returned

"You're late," he announced when Jason held the door for Elizabeth and let her in. "Columbo started ten minutes ago."

Elizabeth clapped her hands and flopped down on the couch next to him. "You know what? They're going to start showing reruns of the A-Team on this channel next week, right after Columbo."

Spinelli gasped. "I'm so there. In fact, I pity the fool that's _not_ there."

Jason rolled his eyes and dropped down into an armchair. Great, so he had _this_ to look forward to every weeknight. "Sonny? Couldn't you assign them both a little more work? They have too much free time."

Spinelli and Elizabeth tossed empty Pop-Tart wrappers at his head, but the gesture came off a little less defiant than they had hoped when the foil scraps floated to the floor before even making it halfway over to Jason's chair. Sonny glared at them for throwing trash around his penthouse and walked over with two cups of coffee, one for himself and one for Jason.

"Actually, I was just thinking about those challenges today," he announced, motioning for Spinelli to lower the volume. "And I've made a decision."

Three pairs of eyes turned and looked up at him.

"I'm going to be honest," Sonny declared. "I hate deciding who wins those things. It's always a tough decision, and then I always have to deal with the loser whining about not being picked."

"We don't whine," Elizabeth and Spinelli cried in unison.

Jason glared at both the little liars. "You've turned whining into an art form."

Sonny held up his hands and waited for them to settle down. "So I talked to Benny, Bernie and Stan, and they said that I must be crazy if I thought they were going to create the challenges _and_ judge them. So that leads me to my announcement."

Jason arched a brow. "And that is?"

"I'm not going to decide the winner anymore," Sonny declared. "From now on, Jason is."

The enforcer's eyes bugged. "No, I'm not!"

His best friend gave him a smug smile. "Oh, yeah, you are. It's about time you started pulling your weight around here."

That earned him a dark scowl. "You can't make me get in the middle of this."

Sonny shrugged. "Fine, then we'll just call the challenges off and go back to the way things were before we started them."

Jason's eyes narrowed. "But that means that Elizabeth would hold the position."

His expression turned smug, the bastard. "Sounds like it."

Jason's lips thinned and he glanced at the kids. "Fine, I'll do it."

"Wait!" Spinelli burst out, his eyes full of mistrust and darting back and forth between his mentor and his hopeful employer. "What? So Stone Cold's going to be picking the winners from now on?"

Sonny grinned. "Yeah, sure looks that way."

"But that's not fair!" the boy cried, surprising Jason. "That's so not fair!"

He had apparently surprised Sonny, too. "Why not? I thought you'd be happy that Jason got to make the call. Why aren't you?"

"Because he'll pick the Dragon for sure," Spinelli growled, shooting the girl in question a menacing look. "I know he will!"

Jason rolled his eyes. "You don't know that. I'll be fair."

The boy actually snorted. "Oh, please!" He shook his head and appealed to Mister Corinthos Sir. "He might say he'll be fair, but he can't be fair when the Dragon is involved, he just can't. And in any case, it wouldn't be a level playing field. See, the Dragon is sleeping with Stone Cold, and that makes him happy. If _I _slept with him, that would just make him mad."

Sonny burst out laughing while Jason contemplated the best way to kill a teenage boy with minimal fuss. "It's a compelling argument, Spinelli," he got out, wiping the corner of his eye, "but the decision stands. Jason decides who gets to be the official hacker for this organization."

Spinelli slumped against the pillows as Elizabeth shot him a superior look. "Great. Just great."

~*~*~*~*~*~

A few nights later at the Port Charles Grille…

Jasper Jacks, international corporate financier and owner of the local Metrocourt Hotel, threw a Black and White Ball every single year to benefit AIDS research. One of his oldest friends lived with the disease and Jax, as his friends and the whole town at large knew him, had announced that the Nurse's Ball did well, but they could always pull in more money. These Black and White Balls were always held at the Metrocourt, but the hotel was still under partial repairs from the fire that had taken seventeen lives a few weeks earlier.

And that was why Sonny, Jason, Elizabeth, and Spinelli found themselves standing in formal attire in the last public venue in town they would have ever ventured of their own free will: the Port Charles Grille, part of the Port Charles Hotel, owned and operated since its establishment by the Quartermaines.

Spinelli, who had insisted on wearing his maroon beanie with the handsome black tuxedo that Elizabeth had gotten for him (and she hadn't wanted to hear a whole big thing about it), scoped out the massive ballroom where the rest of the guests were already milling about.

"Better watch out, Stone Cold," he murmured to his mentor, who was fiddling with his cuffs until Elizabeth smacked his hands. "The vipers have gathered."

It was true. The Quartermaines were out in full force and stood gathered together in the middle of the ballroom, their home turf. Edward was there, dressed in a custom-made tux with Lila in her wheelchair, dressed in an elegant and understated white gown with a matching hat. Alan and Monica were dressed in black and were flanked by AJ and Ned, both looking perfectly at ease in their fancy tuxedos. Tracy sulked at the fringes, dressed in full black, and Dillon and Emily were idly chatting behind their grandparents.

And the whole group was staring – some decidedly more wickedly than others – at Jason and Elizabeth, who were standing in the entrance with their fingers loosely linked.

Sonny let out a sigh that sounded more like a growl when his gaze connected with that of Jeffrey Webber. "I don't have a good feeling about tonight."

"We _had_ to come," Elizabeth pointed out. "We had already promised Jax we would."

"Damn Candy Boy," her guardian cursed. "He couldn't have found any other place? Hell, I would have been happy to go to Eli's, or Kelly's, or hell, even the gazebo in the park. Anywhere but here."

"Everyone's staring at Stone Cold," Spinelli whispered. "It's kind of creepy."

"Well, the only thing to do is just deal with it," Sonny murmured. "We have to make it through the night and as soon as we can, we're cutting our checks and getting the hell out."

"Amen to that," Elizabeth sighed, letting go of Jason's hand as the four prepared to separate. "See you guys for dinner."

And then, because it really was the safest option if they wanted to avoid all the gossip, Sonny, Spinelli, Elizabeth and Jason descended the steps and took off in separate directions, spreading out across the ballroom filled with people they rather would not have socialized with.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Elizabeth had decided, screw Jason, she was in love with his little sister.

Clearly the only one in the Quartermaine family that possessed any measure of genuine charm and compassion, Emily Bowen was also very perceptive, very considerate, and just a touch wicked. It was the perfect combination for any successful young woman, really.

Even though she hated being rescued by anyone, much less admitting to it, Elizabeth was more than happy to shout from the rooftops that Emily had rescued her and that she was exceedingly grateful for it. She had always known of the girl – really, it was impossible not to know of every last member of the town's most affluent and influential family – but she had never really talked to her. They exchanged pleasantries at Nurse's Balls, occasionally chatted at Kelly's while waiting for an order, and offered each other formal smiles at all the cotillions.

They had never really had much of a reason to chat (Emily was several years younger than Elizabeth and they ran in different circles, after all) until it became common knowledge that Elizabeth Webber and Jason Morgan were madly in love and planning a spring wedding, of course, as the writers of Page Six would have everyone believe.

And while such news only made the Quartermaines more eager to insinuate themselves into Jason's life and seek to manipulate him and his beloved to their advantage, it made Emily want to congratulate the two on their newfound relationship. She had been talking with her brother and learning that the rumors were grossly exaggerated when she spotted the object of his affections – and yes, Emily was still very much convinced that Elizabeth was the object of her dense brother's affections, despite what he wanted her to believe – waiting for her green apple martini at the bar.

The only problem with the situation was that the Webbers had spotted her and were advancing. Sarah was the first to reach her, and Emily had already withdrawn from Jason and was heading over to her cousin Dillon and her cousin-in-law Georgie Jones-Hornsby when she spotted the tall blonde whisper something in her unsuspecting un-sister's ear.

Elizabeth stiffened visibly and whirled around, her expression far from warm, and hissed something in reply. Emily had paused, all thoughts of Dillon and Georgie forgotten, as she watched the exchanged. Sarah was smirking in that holier-than-thou manner that she had perfected during her tenure as the perfect Webber daughter, and her lips curled as she spoke to her sister.

The snow white dress Elizabeth had selected for the ball brought out the warm glow to her skin, but it also brought out the heat of her flush as she glared daggers at the woman that unfortunately shared her blood. And that was when Emily decided that someone had to put an end to this family circus.

The solid black she wore actually served to make her look a touch forbidding despite her sweet oval face and soft amber eyes, and Emily used this to her advantage as she stalked across the ballroom, accidentally jostling her grandfather who immediately turned to see what was going on, and insinuated herself between the Webber girls.

A sweetly false smile and a hand on Elizabeth's elbow – along with a particularly sarcastic remark that left Sarah sputtering – was all it took to extract the younger woman from her big sister, and then she was all Emily's to torment of her own will.

"You looked like you could use a hand there."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "There's nothing like standing toe-to-toe with your older sister to make you feel like a little kid all over again."

Emily laughed at that. "I can imagine. I wouldn't know personally, though, because I only have brothers and they both do whatever I tell them."

She eyed the redhead next to her and allowed her a sly smile. "So I've heard."

The youngest Quartermaine grinned wickedly. "I bet you have."

"Thanks for that, by the way," Elizabeth replied, clearing her throat delicately. "I was this close to ripping her bottle-blonde hair out."

Emily's eyes widened. "I thought that was her natural hair color."

"Not nearly as blonde," she answered. "Think darker. Dirtier blonde. She hates it."

"Huh," Emily clucked. "Good to know."

And then, seeing her grandfather advancing on them with twinkling eyes, she grabbed Elizabeth's elbow so fast that the brunette almost spilled her martini. "Come on, let's go get some air."

With that, Emily yanked her brother's girlfriend – and alleged fiancé, although he had denied it until he was blue in the face – out onto the balcony that overlooked the back gardens and recreational area the hotel offered its patrons.

"So…question."

Elizabeth sipped her drink and gave her a wry look. "You Quartermaines don't waste any time, do you?"

"The first phrase any Quartermaine baby ever learned was, time is money," Emily snipped, tilting her nose in the air as a gesture of practiced snobbery. "Anyway, don't try to distract me." Her amber eyes glittered wickedly as she leaned forward. "What's going on between you and my brother?"

Elizabeth bought herself some time by taking a slow sip of her martini. "Me and Jason?"

"Well, unless you're sleeping with AJ behind my sister-in-law's back, that would be the one," Emily drawled, rolling her eyes when Elizabeth's widened. "Oh, come on, I'm not that innocent. Everyone always has this image of me being this sweet, demure little debutante, and they're always surprised when they figure out I'm not."

Elizabeth shrugged, not too keen on admitting that she'd misjudged the youngest Quartermaine just like she herself had been misjudged over the years. "Jason and I are…friends."

Emily gave her a who-do-you-think-you're-talking-to look. "That's not what he said."

She gave her a bland look. "I don't think your brother's the sort to say anything to you about us."

To her surprise, Emily smacked her fists on the balcony ledge. Apparently, she'd been right. "Okay, fine, he wouldn't tell me much of anything," she huffed, "but I have eyes, you know. And despite what my brothers will tell you, a brain, too. So are you guys seeing each other or what?"

It seemed like a pretty safe statement, so Elizabeth nodded. "Yeah, we are."

Emily's eyes glittered. "Is it serious?"

She felt herself laughing even as she rolled her eyes. "Nosy one, aren't you?"

That earned her a cheeky, toothy grin. "I like to think of myself as inquisitive. Charmingly so."

"I bet."

Emily decided to let that go, but only because she was so curious about the situation already at hand. "So? Is it serious? You've gotta fill me in – Jason wouldn't tell me anything! And I promise, I won't tell Grandfather. In fact, I'll lord it over his head and prance around and act really superior, if it'll make you guys feel any better. So what do you say?"

The brunette laughed dryly and pushed herself away from the balcony. "I say that I'll just refer you to Page Six on this one. Just make sure you take it with a grain of salt. Better yet, get a salt lick."

Emily's jaw dropped. "I don't believe it. You're not going to tell me."

Elizabeth gave her a bland smile and withdrew even further. "Afraid not, kid."

The young woman's amber eyes narrowed lethally, turning her into a softer and more mischievous version of her glacial brother. "You sure you don't want to reconsider? Because I'll find out every last detail, I swear I will. I won't rest until I know!"

She laughed and headed back into the main room. "Spoken like a true _Quartermaine_."

The girl screeched in the background, only making Elizabeth laugh more. "You take that back, _Webber_!"

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Your sister's absolutely horrible," Elizabeth declared, even though her twinkling eyes gave her away. "I like her."

Jason groaned good-naturedly. "God help me."

She laughed and gave him a little shove, letting him use it as an excuse to slip his arm around her waist. "You should invite her over to Harborview more."

Again, her boyfriend grimaced. "I can't do that."

"Why not?" Elizabeth asked, mildly put off. After all, she didn't have any female friends at all except Alexis, who hardly counted because she was actually _paid _(triple) to come out to Harborview Towers. And if she wanted Emily Bowen to be a familiar face, what was wrong with it?

Jason was wrinkling his nose as he swirled his single malt around in his glass. "…She's got a crush on Ritchie."

The sound of Elizabeth's laughter, rich and throaty and very amused, made more than a few heads turn to see if it was true: if the glacial Jason Morgan had actually said something funny.

"Well, at least I know she has good taste," the brunette smirked, having too much fun at his expense to mind the dark glare he sent her way.

"Thanks," Jason grumbled, trying not to smile when she fondly rested her head on his shoulder. His hand was still splayed out against the small of her back, and his fingers traced small figure eights there, and he could feel the delicate heat of her swirling up through the white silk of her dress.

"You know, I bet I can set them up," Elizabeth mused, tapping her finger thoughtfully on her chin. "They'd be kind of cute together."

Jason blanched and stared at her as if she'd lost her mind. "Ritchie's almost ten years older than her!"

The brunette gave him a little smirk. "So what? We're about the same when it comes to age difference: twenty-one to twenty-nine."

"Six to nine-and-a-half," he grumbled, looking quite adorably put out, which surprised Elizabeth because she would never have imagined it possible for someone to look adorable while looking put out. The night was full of discoveries, it seemed.

She laughed lightly and leaned against him just a little, letting her hair brush against the underside of his chin. Jason let out a beleaguered sigh and gripped her waist a little tighter, but unfortunately for them that was when they were interrupted by a tired but nevertheless twinkly Jasper Jacks.

"Elizabeth," he smiled warmly as Sonny came up behind him. "It's good to see you."

"Likewise," she replied. She wasn't personal friends with Jax, but he did business with Sonny occasionally, and the two of them ran in the same circles. Plus, he was Alexis's ex-husband and would occasionally drop over while Elizabeth was at her lawyer's apartment. "You've thrown a lovely party, Jax, despite the, er, less than fortunate accommodations."

He gave her a conspiratorial smile. "You'll notice, though, that I stocked up on the liquor."

Elizabeth's eyes brightened. "I _thought_ you had. Well played."

The Australian just smiled back and his eyes flickered over to Jason. "You wouldn't mind if I stole him from you for a minute, would you? You know what they say about all play and no work."

She rolled her eyes and relinquished her loose hold on Jason. "No, I don't mind at all. If anything, it'll give me a chance to find Emily and extend a personal invitation," she added, winking at Jason who glared back.

Still smiling, Elizabeth withdrew from the little group and made her way over to the bar to get a fresh drink. Sonny, Jason and Jax always used these parties to catch up on any outstanding business they might have had, and she had no doubt that Jax was either trying to buy up one of the Corinthos-Morgan waterfront properties, or trying to sell them one of his.

"Apple martini, easy on the apple," she winked at the cute bartender, tapping her nails on the counter as she watched him abandon Alan Quartermaine's order and get right to making hers. Ah, the benefits of good looks and a pretty smile. Living and working in a sausage festival, she was well used to them.

"Long way from home, aren't you?"

Elizabeth closed her eyes, not even bothering to turn around. She knew who it was without having to. A shrill voice, perpetually perturbed (not that the speaker knew the meaning of either of those words), and far too shrewish and judgmental for her age. That could only be the one, the only, the insufferable Lulu Spencer.

"Definitely not in Kansas anymore," she agreed, accepting her drink and turning around so that she was facing the crowd of guests and offering her rude fellow partygoer only her profile. "And it turns out that Frank Baum was right: it didn't take the Wicked Witch of the East long to find me at all! I'd watch out for falling houses if I were you. I hear they're a bitch."

Lulu's lips twisted in disgust. "So dramatic tonight."

"Oh, I don't hold a candle to you, little girl."

The blonde bristled, making Elizabeth smile. Lulu hated to be reminded how young she was and how little she knew. And of course, Elizabeth was always around to take care of both necessities.

"I see you've been getting to know Jason Morgan a bit," Lulu smiled, feigning light conversation.

Elizabeth, who knew exactly where this was going as if she'd been handed the road map, stared straight ahead. If she hadn't, she would have noticed Spinelli coming up to the corner of the bar and asking the barkeep for another splash of orange soda in a champagne flute.

Lulu leaned closer, a vicious little smile playing upon her lips, and Elizabeth realized in the most detached, bemused way that she looked more like her mother now than she ever had before.

"It makes sense," she purred, tipping her head toward where Jason stood, now speaking with Alexis. "I mean, look at him. Tall. Blonde. Cut. A girl would have to be blind not to jump that. And if that girl were you – well." She shrugged lightly. "I figure it must be pure instinct by now."

Elizabeth's lips thinned. "You have a point, little girl? You need me to find you some crayons? Wanna chase after something shiny?"

Lulu's eyes narrowed. "You're sleeping with him, aren't you?"

Elizabeth remained silent.

"Not that anyone's surprised," Lulu sniffed. "In fact, it's what everyone's been saying. And don't worry, no one blames you, like I said. After spending all these years with Sonny, it makes sense to latch onto fresh meat. Like a Lancelot-Guinevere-Arthur situation."

She tapped her chin thoughtfully, not realizing just how perilously close Elizabeth was to breaking her nose. "I just can't imagine that Sonny likes the competition. But who knows? Maybe he's the kind of guy that likes to share. You know, keep it all in the family."

That was it. She didn't care if Taggert had to pull out his handcuffs right there and haul her out on her ass, Elizabeth was going to put the little shrew in a world of hurt.

And just as she was about to calmly set her glass down on the counter (no sense in spilling a perfectly good martini, after all) and cheerfully slam Lulu's oversized head into the bar counter repeatedly, Spinelli cleverly inserted himself between the two of them like a firewall between the processor and a virus. (Nerd would have appreciated the analogy.)

"Excuse me, may I have this dance?"

Lulu arched a brow but hid her incredulity well. "Thanks, Spinelli, but it wouldn't be fair of me to dance with you with Milo and Logan around."

"I wasn't talking to you," the young man informed her archly, giving her such a look that Lulu actually drew back. Green eyes still shooting off sparks, Spinelli let out a calming breath and turned to Elizabeth, inwardly marveling at her stiff upper lip.

"I was asking Elizabeth," he announced, forgoing his nickname and holding out his arm in the most gentlemanly manner he could. He was relieved when she took it, although he knew that she would rather have smashed Mister Perkins to bits and danced on his circuits than spend a minute more in the Bad Blonde One's company.

"Excuse us," he half-growled, barely sparing Lulu a glance before he dragged Elizabeth away from her and then on to the dance floor because, really, it would have looked pretty stupid if he took her anywhere else.

"Sorry," he apologized sheepishly before he drew her loosely into his arms and picked up in the middle of the ongoing dance. Much to his amazement, she didn't put up a fight. Sure, she remained stiff and seething, but she actually danced with him. Granted, she wasn't the best dancer, but he moved quickly enough so that he always managed to pull his foot away before she stepped on it. Silly Dragon.

Elizabeth was eerily silent, and Spinelli braved just a quick look at her. Two bright splotches of red burned in her cheeks and the tip of her nose, almost matching the dark red lipstick she had slicked on with the express purpose of looking spooky. (Okay, so that probably wasn't her purpose, but that's how she looked to him, in that pale white dress and those smoky eyes and that crimson lipstick. Clown paint.)

He spotted Carolyn Webber looking at him curiously, just a little suspiciously, and then quickly turned them so that Elizabeth was no longer in her mother's direct line of vision.

"I can't believe you let her talk to you like that."

He felt her spine stiffen under his hand. "I…have a lot of practice in letting her say whatever she wants to and just leaving. But I would have schooled her tonight if you hadn't shown up."

Spinelli gave Lulu a dirty look over her shoulder. "You've never beaten her up before? Because I've been on the receiving end of your beatings, and I bet she'd remember not to mess with you after that."

Her eyes flicked to his. "_You_ don't."

He arched a brow and turned them slowly. "Be serious, Dragon."

Elizabeth let out an impatient burst of air through her nose and looked away. "I've never done anything to her myself, no. Not physically, no."

"Why not?"

A long time passed before she replied. "I'd never embarrass Sonny like that."

Spinelli's brows jumped. "What does Mister Corinthos have to do with this? And I think that if he knew what the Blonde One was saying, he'd be all for you wiping the floor with her."

Elizabeth shook her head. "Whether we like it or not, Sonny has business partners in this town. He has clients. And he has competitors, like Luke Spencer. And I have to watch every single thing I do in public – from the way I speak to the way I dress, everything – and make sure that I don't harm his image. I can't break Lulu's nose, no matter how many times I've fantasized about it, because it would only come back to bite me and Sonny in the butt."

She shook her head again and relaxed just a little in his arms. "He's taken care of me every way he knows how. And he never asked much in return. So if I can take care of him and the business this way, that's my responsibility. And if it means putting up with her bullshit, and all the lies that she's told everyone about me…I'll do it for Sonny."

The corners of Spinelli's mouth tightened and curved downward. "I'll take care of her."

Elizabeth looked at him in surprise, then let out a laugh. "Don't worry about it, nerd. You don't need to keep posturing."

He slid her a cool look, and his grip on her hand tightened. "I _said_, I'll take care of her."

And then he didn't say anything at all.

Elizabeth's lips parted in surprise and she stared dumbly at him, wondering what on earth inspired the boy to such quiet indignation on her behalf. It took her the rest of the dance and she still couldn't come to any sort of answer. So lost was she in her musings that she didn't even notice that Jason had spotted them and was crossing the dance floor, his hands in his pockets in a gesture of false nonchalance, until he was standing right next to them looking hard at Spinelli with an expression that was part confusion and part displeasure.

"What are you doing?"

Spinelli glanced at Elizabeth's hand in his as the brunette stumbled over his feet, then went with the best answer and offered it to his mentor. "Asking you and the Dragon to share this dance?"

Jason gave him what had to be the most supercilious look to ever grace a human countenance and took Elizabeth's hand as Spinelli adjusted his beanie, set the bill off to the side just enough for it to be cool, and scurried away.

"Kid's so weird."

Jason shrugged and waggled his fingers with hers as the live band took a brief break and decided on the next selection. "He's got father issues."

Elizabeth squinted at him. "Huh?"

"Never mind."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Across the room…

Spinelli pulled a folded twenty out of his pocket and tapped the bandleader on the shoulder. "Hey, Sonorous Songster, I've got a favor to ask."

"What do you want, kid?"

He extended his hand and slipped the man the bill. "Play the most romantic song you know, and if I give the signal, play taps at the end."

The man shrugged. "Sure, whatever."

Ritchie, who had spent the whole evening avoiding Jason's cute little sister at the peril of death, came up to him as Spinelli drew back. "What's going on, Spaghetti?"

The boy's green eyes darted back and forth, searching out his beloved mentor and his mentor's cunning Delilah. "Just doing a little investigating."

"What kind of investigating?" Max wanted to know as he and Milo joined the group. Johnny, who was at the bar getting another beer, saw the group slowly assemble and ambled over.

"Just wait for it," Spinelli told them, tipping his chin toward where Jason and Elizabeth stood talking on the dance floor. "Watch for it."

"What are we watching for?" Johnny asked.

Milo shrugged. "Apparently, Spaghetti's got something in the works."

The Irishman watched for a minute, then shuddered. "Why is the band playing _God Only Knows_? I can't stand those damn Beach Boys."

"Just watch," Spinelli instructed, his eyes on Jason as Elizabeth pulled him into a dance.

The guards shut their mouths and did as they were told. "What are we looking for?"

"Just look at Stone Cold," he said. "Look at how he's watching the Dragon while she talks."

There was definitely something there. Elizabeth was chattering on about something, occasionally using her otherwise occupied hands to gesture frenetically, and she would occasionally miss her step in the dance. Jason didn't particularly seem to mind. He kept them going in their rhythm, he kept them in place, and he kept his eyes on her face as she talked a mile a minute, looking quite content to be where he was.

Max let out a gruff sigh. "He's fucked."

Johnny and Ritchie nodded sagely. "Fucked."

Monica Quartermaine glared sharply at them for the profanity but when she saw all five men staring in one direction with rapt fascination, she turned to look as well and couldn't have been more delighted to see her son dancing with her best friend's daughter. Jason was hardly ever seen dancing in public, but he didn't seem to mind at all, so long as Elizabeth was his partner. It didn't take a genius to see that Jason clearly adored the young woman to distraction – because, really, that was the only way to describe how he was looking at her – and Monica was absolutely thrilled.

Jason didn't see his mother rushing off to find Carolyn and Jeff. He was talking to Elizabeth now, his mouth next to her ear, his words slow and soft. He made her laugh and blush, and she hid her rosy cheeks against his neck.

Spinelli, Johnny, Max, Milo, and Ritchie shuddered in unison.

The song began to reach its last chords and the leader looked over at Spinelli, who flicked his wrist. The other instruments faded off, and the trumpet began to play.

On the dance floor, Elizabeth lifted her head and strained to look over her shoulder. "What's with the band? What are they doing?"

Jason had been wondering the same thing, and his blue eyes narrowed when they landed on Spinelli and the guards. The boy had taken off his beanie and was holding it over his heart, his head bowed, and the guards were looking down as well with their hands clasped at their waists.

He let out a growl and closed his eyes as Elizabeth looked around still. "They're playing taps."

She scrunched her nose. "Isn't that what you play when a soldier dies in combat? Like, when a man goes down?"

Jason gritted his teeth and began imagining exciting new ways to eliminate his upper management bodyguards along with one teenager that probably wouldn't be missed by anyone outside of orange soda and barbeque chips manufacturing industry. "Yeah."


	39. Chapter 39

_Previously – Sonny and Jason discuss an imminent threat; Sonny announces that Jason will decide the winner of the challenges (just to be cruel, and just because he can); Elizabeth, Sonny, Spinelli, and Jason attend Jasper Jacks's Black and White Ball at the Port Charles Grille; Emily rescues Elizabeth from Sarah; Spinelli rescues Elizabeth from the newly christened Bad Blonde One; Spinelli, Johnny, Ritchie, Max and Milo have the bandleader play taps as Jason and Elizabeth finish dancing and mourn their fallen comrade. Semper fi._

**Note – **Anyone who reads this story is a nerd.

Hack | 39

"What do you think?"

Steve Hardy's gray-blue eyes narrowed as he watched his youngest grandchild dance with his best friend's oldest (legitimate) grandson. "I give them six months."

Edward's eyebrows jumped. "Six months? You optimistic bastard."

Steve shrugged, the corners of his mouth twitching into a smirk. "You don't think they'll make it to the altar by then? Good God, Edward, look at the way your boy's speaking to her, looking at her. They'll be standing in front of a priest in six months, mark my words."

His best friend grunted and took a sip of his scotch. "I would have put it at a year, give or take a month. They're stubborn as mules, Jason and Little Lizzie are. And they're the only members of our families with backbones – unfortunately for us. They won't be pressured into anything unless it's what they want."

He sighed and placed his empty glass on a tray held by a passing server. "It's only too bad that the FDA pulled Euphorzipan from the market. It created a sense of well-being in relationships, you know."

Steve threw back the last of his cognac. "Only the first sign of complete pituitary shutdown, my friend."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lulu had stolen Dillon for a dance, so Spinelli found himself chatting with the youngest Quartermaine's wife, Georgie Jones-Hornsby. She was only a year older than him and something of an artist, which he found out because one of the first things she mentioned was that Elizabeth and Jason had been very supportive of her work and that it meant a lot to her.

"Stone Cold's not much for art," Spinelli found himself explaining, though he knew not why. He didn't make a habit of sharing personal information about his beloved mentor, but there was something so genuine and unassuming about Georgie that she put him quite at ease.

"He can't see it that well," he tried to explain as Georgie nodded slowly. "It's hard for him to take in the shapes and the lines and the colors holistically. But if it's closer to a picture – like a still life – then he can see it okay. The Dragon took the picture you painted of Jake's and gave it to him, and she put it up in his bedroom."

The corner of Georgie's mouth twitched. "Why do you call her the Dragon?" she asked, only partly because she wasn't very good at taking compliments. She'd heard him mention the sobriquet several times tonight and was genuinely curious about the reasons behind it. Also, she didn't really want to dwell on the fact that the town's most dangerous criminal had a painting by the police commissioner's daughter hanging in his bedroom.

Spinelli looked at her as if she'd gone daft. "Because she's a Dragon. Hi."

The young woman rolled her eyes and let out a laugh. "I didn't get that impression. She seemed very nice. Much nicer than I've heard she is."

If she wasn't imagining it, Georgie would have sworn that Spinelli's lips thinned. "A bit of advice, Fair One: don't believe everything you hear about the Dragon or Stone Cold."

Proving that she was a girl of good sense, Georgie nodded. "Okay."

Spinelli seemed to visibly relax, and the girl nervously played with a loose lock of her honey-colored hair. "It's just that…Jason and Elizabeth seem like very private people."

He nodded emphatically. "Oh, they are."

"So we don't see them around town that much." Now it was Georgie's turn to explain. "They come to Kelly's occasionally, and sometimes people see them at Jake's, but they always come so late that most of the kids at PCU have already left by then."

"Early classes," Spinelli nodded absently. "Yeah, I know."

"So we don't know too much about them," she continued. "And I know this sounds horrible, but…that just makes people want to know more about their business. They're the closest thing to celebrities we have in this town. You know, they're so reclusive and mysterious," she added when he snorted. "And that just makes people more interested. So inevitably you've got your rumors and all the gossip on Page Six, and it's very hard to figure out what's true and what's not."

"I'll give you the quick run-down, Fair One," Spinelli smirked humorlessly. "They're not engaged, they're not getting married, she's not pregnant, Stone Cold isn't leaving the, uh, coffee business…"

Georgie's eyes widened before she composed herself and nodded in understanding.

"…And the Dragon is not going to be flattered. Also, Mister Corinthos Sir and the Dragon were never…" Two splotches of red burned onto his cheeks. "You know, involved."

The young woman shook her head quickly. "Oh, trust me, I never believed that. I know a lot of people do, but I remember seeing Mister Corinthos and Elizabeth at Kelly's once when I was working my shift and he was just so…paternal toward her that you'd have to be an idiot to think there was anything more going on."

Spinelli's smile widened. "I had a feeling you were sharp as well as Fair."

This remark confused her, but Georgie decided to take it as a compliment. "Thank you."

They lingered together awkwardly for a few more minutes, not sure what to say after that, and Georgie's eyes began to drift anxiously around the ballroom until she saw something that made her stutter.

"Uh…"

Spinelli's green eyes quickly darted her way. "What? What is it?"

Knowing it was considered bad manners to do so, Georgie lifted her finger toward the middle of the room, just off the dance floor. "Isn't that Jason and Elizabeth right there? And aren't those the-"

Spinelli followed her gaze and swore. "The families," he finished glumly. "Excuse me."

~*~*~*~*~*~

They were surrounded.

Jason's cerulean eyes darted back and forth as he discreetly pushed Elizabeth behind him just a little. He had no idea how this had happened. Normally, he was so good at remaining vigilant in social situations. He never let the moment get away from him. He always knew where he was, where everyone else was, and where the nearest exits were.

But they'd rounded him and Elizabeth up like they were cattle, and they were closing in.

"Jason, my boy, it's good to see you," Edward smiled facetiously, reminding Jason of a dog licking its chops. "We were hoping you'd make an appearance."

An answer was required, but Jason didn't bite. He felt Elizabeth turn around behind him, seeking to pull them out of a hole in the circle, but she jumped when she saw her escape quickly closed off by her father.

"It's very good of you to support Jasper," Steve agreed, tilting his glass of champagne at them before taking a practiced sip. "And to show up here, no less."

Elizabeth gritted her teeth. "We tried to convince him to have the ball at Kelly's."

Audrey let that slide. "We're so glad he chose to hold his function here," she preened. "The Port Charles Hotel is such a lovely, elegant establishment. The nicest in town."

Her granddaughter shrugged. "I wonder why so many people prefer staying at the second-nicest Metrocourt, then. The mind boggles."

But their families were far too pleased with the general situation to be bothered by such cattiness. "We've made renovations recently," Edward declared, waving a hand around the massive ballroom. "We thought it would be a good idea to invest in one of our most popular holdings."

"It shows," Steve nodded. "You had the lobby redone in different colors. It gives it such a fresh, young look."

Jason rolled his eyes. He knew the Quartermaines – and now Webbers – lived to make his life difficult, but discussing carpeting and siding colors? Really?

"It's certainly a dramatic contrast," Elizabeth got out through her teeth. Jason fought a chuckle and squeezed her hand, which he held so that his family couldn't see.

"And have you noticed the chandelier?" Edward asked eagerly, sounding like a child ready to show off his favorite toys. He pointed toward the ceiling. "Really, how could you not? It commands the whole room."

"It certainly is a wonderful focal point," Carolyn agreed. "The eye is drawn right to it immediately upon entering. We had one like this at our home in Colorado, Jeffrey, remember? It was smaller, and the design wasn't as intricate, but we had one."

"The one you just had to have?" he asked her lightly. "Yes, I remember. It cost us a fortune, and it came crashing down a month later."

"It was a good thing I made you take out insurance on it," Carolyn got out through gritted teeth as Elizabeth rolled her eyes. Her parents had been fighting since before her accident and they continued to do so afterward. If they hated each other so much, they should have just gotten divorced and saved everyone the headache. Not her, of course. She didn't care one way or the other. "Don't you think?"

"Well, this one isn't going to come crashing down," Edward declared, gazing up at the inanimate object. "It's brand new, professionally installed, of course, and it's going to stay a long time. We had the crystal imported, and the entire thing was custom-made according to my specifications. I even made the design you see etched on the panes."

Elizabeth squinted up at the bright light, just to annoy the old goat. "Oh, those squiggles? I thought that was dust."

"I thought those were dead bugs," Jason shrugged, looking quite unconcerned with the whole affair. "0 for 2."

"Tsk, tsk," she supplied dutifully.

Audrey glanced discreetly over her shoulder as Lulu detained Spinelli, who was marching over no doubt to rescue his friends from the feeding frenzy. "It's a lovely chandelier, Edward."

"It's merely the first of many lovely things to come, Audrey," the old man promised. "I'm having plans drawn up now to update the bar over there, as well as the other fixtures in this hotel. We're to also have a new lounge, and I hope to begin construction on that next year."

His blue eyes twinkled as he and Steve shared a look and then turned to the children. "This hotel has been in our family since it was first established," he said, looking at them so conspiratorially that one would have thought he was imparting grave secrets of state. "And to invest in it is to invest in the family."

Jason's eyes widened and he and Elizabeth both backed up a step, finding themselves alarmingly close to Jeff and Carolyn.

But Edward was still continuing, his blue eyes glowing with the devil. "And you know how important it is to invest in family. After all, we hope to pass this hotel down to the next generation of Quartermaine…Webbers."

It was as if he'd just produced a paper cup and turkey baster for them. Jason and Elizabeth blanched, shocked that Spinelli had been right and that the Quartermaines and Webbers actually had the nerve to discuss the next generation of Quartermaine-Webbers to their faces. And just as Jason was considering throwing Elizabeth over his shoulder and charging through the impenetrable wall of Jeff and Carolyn straight on to the end zone, a crackle and a bit of white powder on his tux caught his attention.

"Why's there plaster on my shoulder?"

"And in my hair?" Elizabeth wondered, swiping her hands over her partly pulled up curls to get rid of the white coating. "Where is it coming from?"

A larger crackle, a screech, and a veritable sheet of plaster put an end to that line of questioning. Jason's eyes flew to the ceiling, where Edward's prized chandelier had broken from the ceiling and was now hanging a few frayed wires.

…And then it wasn't hanging at all.

"MOVE!" he shouted, shoving his grandfather back. The guests scattered and pulled back toward the edges of the ballroom, and what happened next came to pass so quickly that Jason could barely recall it when asked.

The wires snapped and the chandelier fell. Steve grabbed Audrey and swept her off her feet, pulling her as far back as he could. Edward stumbled backward and almost fell on his rear from the power of Jason's push, and Alan grabbed Jeff's arm and pulled him back as Monica and Carolyn turned around and made a break for it. Even Lulu threw her arm in front of Spinelli's chest, practically choking him, and pulled him as far back as she could.

And all Jason remembered about what he did was that all of his muscles went impossibly tight, and it was only a surge of pure adrenaline that enabled him to wrap his arm around Elizabeth's waist and knock them both to the floor before the chandelier hit down on the exact spot where they were standing.

It wasn't over.

The windows shattered at the same time that the chandelier hit the ground. The guests hit the floor as well, their screams and shrill yells so loud that for the first few minutes, no one even realized that they were also hearing the sound of gunshots being fired right into the ballroom of the Port Charles Hotel.

Sonny had grabbed Spinelli, who had been abandoned by Lulu, and quickly upturned a table. He pulled the boy behind it and grabbed Johnny, both of them making a dive for it. Ritchie, who was pressed up in the corner with a violently trembling Emily, reflected that at least this time, Jason couldn't kill him for being so close to his sister. Max and Milo covered the band, overturned the platform for the stage, and shoved the men under it. The Spencers, too, had taken cover, and Jax was with the Quartermaines as they sought cover behind the bar along with the Webbers, the Scorpios, Taggert, and as many other guests as could possibly fit behind there.

Only Jason and Elizabeth remained in the middle of the room, on just the corner of the dance floor, right in the middle of the melee. Elizabeth's dress had parted and her calf was visible as Jason covered her with his body. He remained unmoving, pressed over her so as to shield her as completely as he could from the bullets and the flying glass. One of her hands was visible, and it clenched his jacket tightly for the first few minutes before her grip loosened and her fingers fell away from him.

Everyone was silent by the time the bullets stopped. No one moved a muscle, least of all Jason, for a full minute once silence reigned. They hardly dared to breathe, to blink, lest it all start again like a horror movie on replay.

The ballroom was in shambles. A closer look at the gaping hole in the ceiling revealed that tiny explosives had been planted all along the stem of the chandelier; once set off, they caused the massive decoration to plummet to the floor. The windows had all been shattered and there were bullets lodged in the wall and in the bar. The furniture was splintered, the lights exploded, and then, as if things couldn't get any worse, the sprinklers turned on.

Someone, somewhere, started laughing.

The soft tinkle of glass meant that someone had moved. Edward Quartermaine gingerly stood, helped up by his son and daughter-in-law, and dusted the glass and plaster off his suit with bleeding hands. Carolyn let go of her husband's lapels and quickly ran her hands over him, checking him for any injuries he might have sustained when he covered her with his body. And then she threw her arms around his neck and started to cry.

Lulu was still in her father's arms and Dillon was huddled up next to Lucky as Georgie and Maxie poked their heads up from behind the far counter of the bar. Taggert helped Mac up and then made sure Felicia and the girls were all right, and then he started looking. For Sonny.

The mobster, however, couldn't have cared less at the moment. His fingers were prying open Spinelli's eyelids so that he could check the boy's pupils. He scanned him for any wounds and once satisfied that the boy was unharmed, they began to stand. Ritchie stood as well, expecting Emily to follow, but found that the girl couldn't even climb to her feet. Murmuring something that he hoped passed as reassurance – really, he had no idea how to handle little girls – he wrapped his arm around her waist and half-lifted her up off the floor.

Jason still hadn't moved.

Audrey Hardy had gone as white as a sheet, and she barely registered that her husband was swearing under his breath. Steve never swore. Rising up off the floor, the elderly doctor absently dusted himself off and crossed the ballroom with the quick, determined stride of a much younger man.

Alan and Monica, too stunned to move, could only watch as Steve picked his way past the chandelier and dropped to his knees beside Jason. The young man's tuxedo was torn from the glass and blood was visible, but he could tell at a first glance that it wasn't that bad. If Jason's reflexes had been any less sharp, the boy wouldn't have made it. As it was, he was barely two feet away from where the chandelier hit.

Jason had heard him and moved slowly, the muscles in his back rolling as he lifted himself off Elizabeth and swung over to the side. In the back of his mind he knew they had an audience, but it was one of those filmy, almost surreal thoughts that one only remembers and cringes about several hours after the fact.

"Elizabeth?"

The rough pad of his thumb passed over her parted lips, and Steve peered over Jason's shoulder.

"E-Elizabeth?" he tried again, his hand slipping down to her neck so that he could feel for her pulse. God, there was so much blood. It covered her white dress, making her look like one of those newly beheaded geese in the butcher shop window, and Jason couldn't stop his hands from shaking.

"Jesus Christ," he murmured, rising to his knees so that he was kneeling over her. She was on her back, her head lolling to the side, and her eyes peacefully shut. But there was _so much blood_.

"Has she been shot?" Steve got out, unable to stand the sight of his youngest grandchild this way. He looked at Jason, noticed something change in the young man's eyes, and then had to draw back.

Jason wasn't trembling anymore. He moved his hands over Elizabeth's body, the skilled hands of a surgeon rather than a career criminal, probing her muscles and her flesh for wounds. Steve watched, slack-jawed, as he performed his examination and the elderly doctor found himself wondering if some of what the boy had learned in medical school had actually survived past the accident or not.

"How bad is it? She's bleeding all over-"

"She's not wounded," Jason replied in a clipped tone. "No bullet wounds. And as far as I can tell, her cuts are superficial."

And that was when all hell broke loose. The next thing he knew, there were screams, there was crying, there was anger, and all of it rolled around him until he could barely think over the din. Taggert charged Sonny, demanding to know who had put a hit out on him this time and how many innocent people had to get hurt before he kissed off. The Spencers, of course, weren't too far behind, and tempers flared as the people of Port Charles picked themselves up after this latest event of mob violence.

Jason drowned them out and only looked up when Steve spoke.

"She needs to go to the hospital."

He nodded and began to gently scoop her up in his arms. As far as he could tell, she hadn't broken any bones. He needed to get her out of here as soon as possible.

Steve's hand on his arm stopped him. "I'll go with you," he said, the announcement sounding more like a plea than a declaration.

Jason shook his head. "It'll take too long. I'll take her." He spotted one of the newer guards, a kid named Trey, standing near the exit not looking too worse for the wear, but definitely stunned. He jerked his head toward the door and the kid nodded, quickly pulling his keys out and darting off to get the car.

"I'll take her," he repeated, rising with Elizabeth in his arms.

Steve raised his hand to stop him, to say something, but Jason was already marching out of the ballroom.


	40. Chapter 40

Previously – Steve and Edward place bets on when Jason and Elizabeth will be standing at the altar; Georgie points out an ambush to Spinelli; the Webbers and Quartermaines talk about babies with Jason and Elizabeth; violence erupts in the Port Charles Hotel; Jason takes Elizabeth to the hospital.

**Note – **You know what I've discovered is awesome? Carrying a notebook with you, and writing outlines in it when you're bored out of your mind in public, and then ripping those pages out and putting them in a file folder. :) Guys? I don't know if you know this, but things you write out by hand on actual paper do not get spontaneously erased. Who knew? Gosh, what will they think of next?

Hack | 40

"She's fine," Jason spoke into his cell phone, holding his finger to his ear to block out the noise in the hospital. "She's just fine. No bullets, no flesh wounds, no internal bleeding. She just hit her head on the floor and then fainted from the loud noises."

He could hear Sonny sigh with relief. _"Thank God. You hear that Spinelli? She's fine."_

His young friend murmured something that Jason didn't catch, but it sounded like he was relieved as well. Jason switched the phone to his other ear and moved aside for a couple young orderlies that addressed him as "Doctor." That was only because he was currently fulfilling Alan and Monica's wet dream and was dressed in a pair of dark blue surgical scrubs.

His parents had arrived at the hospital just after him, and Monica had dragged him away while Elizabeth was being situated and insisted that he take off his torn tux and get his cuts taken care of. And when he resisted and tried to get back to Elizabeth, his mother had shoved his chest and pushed him onto the examination table, whipped out the antiseptic spray, and began muttering something about stubbornness and being mule-headed. And so Jason had sat there like a three-year old as his mother cleaned his cuts and bandaged the deeper ones, then handed him a pair of scrubs to put on. And thankfully, she left him alone after that.

"_So what happened? I only caught a glimpse of her, but there was so much blood-"_

Jason winced. "A lot of that was mine."

A pause. _"Ah."_

He nodded even though Sonny couldn't see him. "She's not seriously injured, but she's got a lot of cuts from the glass. Mostly on her arms and her legs, and none of them are too deep. They're taking care of those now."

A longer pause. _"Where are you?"_

It wasn't the question he'd expected, and Jason was surprised to hear an edge to Sonny's voice. "What do you mean?"

"_I mean, where are you?" _his best friend ground out. _"Please tell me you're at a safe house like we thought."_

"…We're at General Hospital. Elizabeth needed a doct-"

He snapped his mouth shut when Sonny swore darkly. _"You took her to the hospital? Are you crazy?"_

"Sonny, I-"

"_Jason, she __hates__ the hospital! She can't be there!"_

Jason let out a calming breath through his nose. "Sonny, I _know_ she hates the hospital, but I didn't know if she was bleeding internally or if she had a concussion or what – she needed a doctor. What did you expect me to do, take her to a safe house or the penthouse and tell Patrick to meet us there?"

"_Yes!" _came the exasperated reply. _"For God's sake, Jason-"_

"Jason!"

He looked up to see Patrick Drake, dressed in his aquamarine free clinic scrubs and ready to change and go home, darting over toward him from the elevators. "Hold on, Sonny."

"_Jason-"_

"What the hell are you doing here?" the young doctor inquired not too politely. "And please don't tell me that Nurse Johnson knew what she was talking about when she told me that Elizabeth was here."

Jason stared at him.

Patrick closed his eyes and swore, then jerked his thumb toward the door just behind him. "Is she in there?"

At Jason's nod, the doctor scowled and pushed past him. "I really wish you hadn't brought her here, Morgan."

Jason only caught a glimpse of Elizabeth on the examination table before the door shut behind Patrick, but he was encouraged to see that she was starting to come to. Letting out a gruff sigh that sounded more like a grunt, he returned to Sonny. The older man immediately fired off with a question.

"_Was that Patrick? Is Patrick there?"_

"Yeah," Jason mumbled, trying to get a look through the blinds when he heard something clatter to the floor. "Yeah, Patrick just got here. What-"

He was interrupted by a loud crash, and then he heard the nurses speaking in loud, firm voices as other, smaller crashes could be heard. On the line, Sonny was swearing and Jason could hear Spinelli inquiring about it in the background.

But before he could return to the conversation at hand, the door flew open and Patrick poked his head out. "Jason! Get in here!"

"Sonny, I gotta go." With that, he flipped off his phone, shoved it in his pocket, and darted into the room on Patrick's heels to find Elizabeth very awake and very hysterical. She had kicked away the nurse's tray and there was a puddle of peroxide and a heap of cotton balls on the floor, and now the brunette was thrashing about, doing her best to escape the two nurses that were trying to pin her down to the table.

Jason pushed his way past them, right over to Elizabeth's pillow, and fought the sinking feeling in his stomach. This was why Sonny had been so furious to learn that he'd taken her to the hospital; Jesus Christ, he should have known better. He had been _told_ that she hated hospitals, but had assumed that her hatred for General Hospital was like his: more of a nuisance than anything else.

He just hadn't expected this. Elizabeth was terrified, and she was doing whatever she could to get away and even he was having a hard time holding her down and trying to break through. She had even told him once that Dr. Winters had recommended her for suicide watch after she kept tearing out her IVs and throwing away her pills in a last-ditch attempt to get away from her parents and every other meddling bystander that had an opinion about her condition. She had _told _him, explicitly, but he hadn't really heard her.

God damn.

Jason amazed the disheveled nurses by actually latching onto both of Elizabeth's wrists. He held them with one hand and brought them down to her stomach, holding them there as the nurses took hold of her ankles. Patrick gave him a grim look and set about inspecting and cleaning the wounds she'd sustained.

Standing as they were proved awkward, so Jason eased himself up onto the side of her bed and planted one foot firmly on the ground to brace himself. Elizabeth still thrashed around but he was able to better hold onto her, and now his task was to break her out of her hysteria.

Her eyes were clenched tightly, her lips set in a grim line, and her every muscle was tense. Jason swallowed roughly and used his free hand to brush her matted hair back from her face. It was damp from cold sweat as he smoothed it back with his fingertips, finding that her skin was cold and clammy as well.

"Elizabeth?"

Patrick didn't even glance up as he cleaned the dried blood off a gash just above her ankle. He had come up to the fifth floor ready to shower, change, and check out for the day when Epiphany grabbed his arm and said that there had been an incident at the Port Charles Grille (Port Charles citizens were well used to using the work 'incident' when they meant mob-related-shit) and that one Jason Morgan had brought one Elizabeth Webber to the ER in his arms, and that she thought he should know.

After all, it was common knowledge that he was the mob doctor, and that he _never_ treated any of his, er, other clients on the premises because he would then have to fill out police reports should those aforementioned clients suffer from gunshot wounds which was well within the realm of possibility.

So to see not one but two potential clients of Patrick Drake's was enough for Epiphany to personally contact the young doctor and let him know.

Patrick still couldn't believe that Jason had brought Elizabeth here, but that didn't matter at the moment. All he needed to focus on was cleaning her up as quickly and thoroughly as he could, and then to get her the hell out of here before she injured herself or others. And preferably before the Webbers closed in.

He glanced over at Jason for the briefest of moments, just to make sure that he still had Elizabeth's hands in his grasp. The last time Sonny had been forced to bring the young woman in, Elizabeth had woken up from the anesthesia after surgery and nearly put a nasty gash in his arm while he was trying to get through post-op.

But Jason held her hands secure in one of his and was doing his best to talk to her. Elizabeth's eyes were still squeezed shut, the spasms of the delicate muscles there clearly visible, and she wasn't responding to the mobster's hushed murmurs. He was doing his best to talk to her in a slow, calm, gentle tone but he just wasn't getting through.

Patrick pulled the cotton ball back when Elizabeth tried to twist away, glaring at the nurse who'd let her go. Once the young woman was back under their control, he resumed applying antiseptic to the worrisome gash high on her calf.

"Elizabeth, you need to wake up," Jason firmly ordered, his fingers still stroking her damp hair. "Wake up, honey. Just open your eyes, and you'll see I'm right here."

"That's good," Patrick called out, concentrating on clotting up the next gash. "Keep talking to her, just like that. She needs to hear your voice. Just don't stop talking."

Jason swallowed and let the backs of his fingers trail over her cheek. She was deathly white and cold, but her lashes fluttered at the contact. Encouraged, he repeated the motion and said her name again. When she didn't respond he said it louder and was stunned when her head actually turned the smallest fraction of an inch toward him.

"Keep it up," Patrick urged. "We need to pull her out of this if we can at all. Try getting Sonny on the phone – his voice sometimes helps."

Jason ignored him and pressed the lightest kiss to Elizabeth's temple. She whimpered and turned her face toward him, her limbs still tight, but at least she was responding. "Elizabeth, open your eyes. Just open your eyes – that's all I want."

Her lashes fluttered again, as if she was desperately trying to obey his gentle directive but her body was resisting her too fiercely. Jason had never seen someone in such terror before, and the sight of her like this humbled him, scared him, and made him that much more determined to help break her out of it.

"Open your eyes and look at me," he pleaded gently. "Can you do that?"

Patrick hiked up the edge of her hospital gown in order to get a better look at the cut high on her thigh. Her knees were bent up off the table and try as he would, he couldn't get her to straighten her legs. Thinking it a lost cause, he went about cleaning the cut anyway.

"Jason?"

A triumph. She had actually registered his presence and whispered his name. Jason's heart leapt and he gripped her hands tightly. Now all he had to do was get her to snap out of it.

"Right here, right here. Come on, Elizabeth, look at me."

He didn't know how long he stood there, whispering for her to wake up and look at him, and finally, when the words were sounding hollow even to his ears, Elizabeth cracked open her eyes long enough to catch a glimpse of his face. Slowly, she pulled herself out of it and kept her eyes trained on his, as if breaking that contact would send her right back into that paralyzing terror that always claimed her when she set foot in the hospital.

And as Patrick finished bandaging the cuts, Jason held her hands and whispered her name and thanked whatever higher power was out there that she trusted him enough to let him help her out of this.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Back at Harborview Towers…

Jason had carried Elizabeth out of the hospital as soon as Patrick was done. He'd helped her change into a pair of pink scrubs, and then he'd picked her up and carried her right out the door. Steve Hardy had tried to stop him: the old man wanted to keep her there for "observation." Jeff and Carolyn, who had both been treated at this point, agreed. Even Alan tried to physically bar him from taking her away.

And just as Jason was about to lose his temper over the fact that these people – strangers, really, for all intents and purposes – thought they could still dictate Elizabeth's life and decide what was best for her even though staying there clearly wasn't, Patrick Drake stepped up and insisted that as Elizabeth's doctor, he saw no reason for her to stay at General Hospital when all she had sustained were a few cuts and gashes. Jason knew that the young doctor would have hell to pay for that after he left, but it seemed that Patrick had accepted such unpopularity as par for the course.

And so he'd marched out through the automatic doors, buckled her up in the car, and had Trey get them home. And then he'd picked her up once more, rode the elevator fifteen stories up, and only made it two steps out into the hall before the door of Penthouse IV flew open and Sonny was upon them.

That was why Elizabeth was currently housed in the maid's room in her former guardian's penthouse. Sonny had ushered Jason inside and had him set her down on the bed, and then Ritchie ran over to her place and brought back a pair of shorts and a light t-shirt for her to wear. Elizabeth had shuddered as she slipped out of the plastic scrubs. It was the first sound they'd heard from her that night.

Sonny had set to work after that making sure that his former ward was truly alright. He'd inspected her injuries with all the gravity of a doctor, and then he'd gotten out the orange juice. Elizabeth barely took a sip of it before handing it over to Jason, who set it down on the night table, but that didn't stop Sonny from trying to get her to drink something else, or perhaps to eat something.

When it became clear that the brunette wasn't about to do either of those things, the men retired into the main room to converse while Spinelli lingered, still poking around the room that his mentor had formerly occupied when he had a bum leg.

Once they were out of earshot, Sonny wasted no time informing his partner that Alcazar had called him up after the hit and taken responsibility – something to the effect of how they had no place to hide, and he could take care of them no matter where they were.

"He's reckless," Jason muttered, sinking down onto the hutch of Sonny's favorite armchair. "He's being stupid."

"He's impatient," Sonny agreed. "He wants that land and he wants those routes and he's like a kid: he wants it all now."

The enforcer cracked his knuckles and glanced in the direction of the room where Spinelli was presumably keeping Elizabeth company. "If we don't take care of this, he'll just do it again. And we might not be as lucky next time."

Sonny was nodding. "Good, you agree. Because I think we should take him out as soon as possible."

Jason squared his jaw. "Get Stan to grab the Alcazar files Elizabeth and Spinelli pulled for their last challenge. I'll go over it with you guys, and as soon as we figure out a plan I'll take care of it."

The mobster looked visibly relieved. "I'll do that now. Stan should still be at the warehouse, and he's probably heard of the hit so he knows this is coming. Give me a few minutes."

Jason nodded and quietly slid off the couch, heading back to room by the kitchen as Sonny picked up the phone. He expected to hear Spinelli talking to Elizabeth, trying to engage her in conversation or an argument as only the boy could ("Superman trumps Batman like whoa" or something like that) but instead only heard silence.

And as he drew closer to the door, he saw why.

Elizabeth was sitting up in bed, dressed in her shorts and a pale pink t-shirt, her legs crossed at the ankles in front of her. Spinelli, who had changed into his own plaid green pajama bottoms and an old band t-shirt, sat next to her mimicking her pose.

The brunette wasn't paying any attention to him. Instead, her unfocused eyes drifted over her bandaged limbs. She stretched one arm out across her torso and used the fingers of her other hand to pick at the edge of the band-aid Patrick had used to cover even the smallest of cuts. Jason had wondered at the time why the doctor was doing that, and was eventually told that Elizabeth wasn't good when it came to seeing cuts and scrapes on her own body. It set off something in her that they'd first seen after the accident, and she was known to freak out at the mere sight of a paper cut. It was something that Jason hadn't known.

But even having all of her cuts and gashes bandaged up wasn't good enough for her: Elizabeth was currently bent on picking the bandages off one by one. She'd get the edges pried off via her fingernails and would be on her way to peeling the whole damn thing off, and then Spinelli would smack her hand like she was a child reaching for a cookie before dinner.

Her lips would pucker into a frown and without lifting her eyes to him, she'd set about peeling the blasted thing off once more. But Spinelli had already discovered a way to deal with this, and had pulled a box of Scooby-Doo bandages out of the First-Aid box Sonny had brought down just in case.

He waited calmly until Elizabeth had successfully peeled off her hospital bandage and then, before she could catch more than a glimpse of the cut underneath, he'd slap on a colorful Scooby-Doo band-aid.

Jason hadn't expected it, but the maneuver actually worked. Elizabeth seemed to like the bright colors and the licensed characters, and she would actually leave those bandages in place. She'd just move on to the next plain one, and Spinelli would repeat this process.

Jason stood by the door and watched until this peculiar ritual was indulged and over, and Elizabeth's pale arms and legs were covered with adhesive scraps bearing the likeness of licensed cartoon individuals. A large pile of waxy scraps sat on Spinelli's lap, the empty wrappings that the bandages came in along with Elizabeth's dirty ones.

It was almost sweet, how the boy was sitting with Elizabeth, and Jason knew that if he made his presence known Spinelli would put a quick end to that display.

Once Elizabeth was covered with these bright adhesive strips, she sat still in the bed and looked at them, studied them in the most peculiar, detached way.

And then she started peeling the first one off.

Apparently even Spinelli didn't have that much patience. He smacked her hand before she could pry up the edge of the first band-aid, and Elizabeth's lips pursed into that cute frown once more. She tried again, but with the same results. Again, and her hand was smacked.

And then she smacked Spinelli back.

This continued until the two of them were exacting quite a beating and somehow, at the end of all of this, Spinelli ended up being pushed out of the bed and onto the floor. Once there, he glared up at Elizabeth and then turned to his mentor, who he had seen leaning against the threshold.

"I think it's time you took her home," he remarked pointedly, picking himself up off the ground. "Then _you _can watch her crazy butt."

Not a man to argue when posed with the possibility of taking a beautiful girl home and 'watching her butt,' Jason walked over to the bed and scooped Elizabeth up. She yawned and curled up in his arms, resting her head against his chest as he carried her out into the hall. Jason pressed a kiss to the top of her hair, not particularly caring that Spinelli was following them and probably thinking that he was a wuss.

The boy shook his head and darted up to open the door for his mentor, then followed him out of Penthouse IV as Elizabeth made a snuffling noise and yawned again, using Jason's t-shirt to scratch her nose.

Spinelli ruefully shook his head. "Stupid Dragon."


	41. Chapter 41

Previously – Patrick treats Elizabeth at GH; Jason gets an earful for taking her there in the first place; Jason and Sonny agree to end Alcazar; Spinelli and Elizabeth indulge an odd ritual.

Hack | 41

The late morning was a time of discovery for Elizabeth. She discovered that (1) it was morning; (2) it was late; (3) she was in her own bed; (4) she was somehow dressed in Jason's favorite violet silk nightie; and (5) Jason was nowhere to be found.

This was cause for concern. After their horrific night, she had expected to wake up with Jason at her side. He was supposed to be in bed with her, and they were supposed to spend the whole morning and much of the afternoon burrowing under the covers together and trying to forget the events of the previous night. She hadn't expected to wake up alone and untouched, for Christ's sake.

And it didn't seem like he had been home at all last night. For one thing, his toothbrush was dry. For another, he always took a shower in the early morning and left his gross wet towel on the shower rod for her to practically walk face-first into when she stumbled into the bathroom on her own several hours later, and this morning his towel was dry.

Also, there wasn't any drool on his pillow. (His pillow on _her_ bed, of course.)

So from all this, Elizabeth was able to brilliantly deduce that her stupid boyfriend hadn't been home at all last night. She'd gotten shot at (well, to be fair, so had he) and she had vague memories of being at the hospital, and then she had to put up with the stupid nerd hitting her randomly and for no good reason, and her dumb louse of a boyfriend didn't even spend the night with her.

Elizabeth padded slowly down the stairs, still dressed in her nightgown and testing her stiff limbs. God, she felt like hell. Her muscles were sore and protested with every movement, but it was nothing that a good hot shower and a strong cup of coffee wouldn't fix. Maybe she'd even take Sonny up on his offer of orange juice. After all, he practically swore by the stuff.

And then, once she was feeling more like herself, she'd track down Jason and find out just what his deal was and what he was doing and if he was okay. Most likely, he was out trying to figure out who staged the attack and planning how to best bring them to task for it.

She was just about to postpone her plans for coffee and a shower and pick up the damn phone to call him when she heard a commotion in the hallway and the next thing Elizabeth knew, her door was thrown open and Ritchie barged into the penthouse.

Her eyes bulged and she instinctively made to stand behind the couch – she was still wearing her nightgown, after all – but that was before she saw the wild gleam in his eyes.

"Ritchie?"

His lips settled into a grim line, and his expression made her shut her mouth instantly. "Jason's been arrested."

Silence.

Ritchie's eyebrow twitched. "Elizabeth? Did you hear me? Jason's been-"

"Arrested?" she got out incredulously. "What?"

"It happened at Kelly's," he explained hurriedly. "We – we were at Kelly's. He was picking up some breakfast for you guys. Taggert came in and presented the warrant and cuffed him. It just happened, twenty minutes ago. I called Sonny immediately and I just got back and wanted to let you know-"

She didn't let him finish. Instead, she reached out, grabbed his elbow, and hauled him toward the open door. "Let's go."

Spinelli could be seen darting into Sonny's penthouse as soon as Ritchie and Elizabeth stepped into the hall and, never one to be outdone by the stupid nerd, the brunette followed in hot pursuit. Sonny stood at his desk, one hand holding his phone to his ear while the other gestured frenetically.

"Alexis, I don't care if you had plans with Candy Boy – Jason's been _arrested_. You don't need to be at Jax's penthouse - What? You are? Okay, good." He glanced up when he saw the threesome enter and nodded grimly, switching the phone to his other ear.

"Listen, here's what I need you to do. I'm rounding up the kids right now and I'll tell them what happened. I need you to get down to the PCPD _now_ and…where are you? Why do I hear some loud guy in the background talking about last night's _Desperate Housewives_?"

Sonny listened carefully, his brows pulling together. "A cab? What happened to your car?…Alexis, I'm not _paying_ you to be stuck in traffic! I need you to take this seriously and - Hello? Hello?"

He scowled and slammed the phone down. "She hung up on me. Damn woman."

"Sonny, what happened?" Elizabeth was amazed at how strong her voice was in the face of this news. She wasn't trembling or wavering at all. Good for her! "Ritchie said-"

"Guys, Jason's been arrested," Sonny explained, trying to sound as calm as he possibly could with both Elizabeth and Spinelli staring up at him, crestfallen over the news of their beloved mentor. Well, Spinelli's mentor. Elizabeth's…whatever.

"It happened just now at Kelly's, but I don't want you to worry, because Alexis and I are on it and we're not going to let any-"

"What are the charges?"

Sonny blinked. "What?"

"What are the charges?" Elizabeth repeated firmly. "What is he being charged with?"

Her former guardian opened and closed his mouth, looking much like a fish out of water before he finally replied, "the murder of Lorenzo Alcazar."

Spinelli's lips settled into a thin line. The boy knew enough to know not to ask if Jason was innocent. Alcazar was the reason that he, Sonny, Elizabeth and Jason were targeted at the Grille; he was the reason that a bunch of innocent civilians got hurt; and he was the reason that the Dragon had to go to the hospital and fight back memories of the worst time in her life. Stone Cold would have been a total pansy if he let that creep walk.

And if there was anything Stone Cold wasn't, it was a pansy. Yeah.

"But Alexis is on it," Sonny made sure to repeat. Truth be told, he was a little unnerved by the silence. Neither Spinelli nor Elizabeth looked surprised when they learned what Jason was being charged with. If anything, hearing the news only made them look…resolute. Determined. About what, Sonny had no idea.

"She's going to make sure the charges don't stick," he emphasized. "She's going to get him cleared and he'll be out of there and back home faster than we can slap Taggert with a harassment suit."

"We have to get down to the PCPD," Spinelli announced, looking back and forth between Sonny and Elizabeth. "You say Our Lady Litigator is already on her way; we should be there, too, to support Stone Cold."

Sonny nodded. "Yeah, let's go. If anything, we can learn more about what we're up against if we actually get down there."

Spinelli nodded back and then turned to Elizabeth. "You're gonna wanna change, though."

Elizabeth stared at him, looked down at her nightgown, swore, and ran back to her penthouse to do just what he'd suggested. She certainly wouldn't do Jason much good showing up in her nightgown. Well, not the kind of good he was most in need of, at any rate.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Spinelli and Sonny were already at the PCPD by the time Elizabeth arrived with Ritchie after changing into a pair of pants and a long-sleeved blouse that effectively hid most of her bandages. In fact, not only were those two losers at the PCPD; they were in the interrogation room with Jason. Ignoring the looks she received from Taggert and a couple of the cops milling around the office, Elizabeth crept closer to the door. It was sturdy, with just one glass pane in the middle, and she stood on her toes in order to look in.

Jason was sitting at the table, his hands cuffed and his head bent as he talked to Sonny and Spinelli. The two men listened earnestly and nodded emphatically; obviously, they were discussing his situation and the steps – legal or not – that needed to be taken to get him out.

She stood there for a long moment, her eyes boring into his as she hoped that he'd catch her gaze and see her standing there. But Jason remained in serious conversation with the guys, and Elizabeth was left standing outside in the large police office.

"Elizabeth?"

She whirled around and spotted Alexis coming out of DA Scott Baldwin's office. "Alexis! Thank God, I was just-"

"Let's go in here," the lawyer interrupted, taking her elbow and ushering her into an empty conference room. Once inside, she touched her finger to her nose and used that finger to then push the door closed. Only when the audible click echoed in the small chamber did she turn around and address the issue at hand.

"You know by now what he's being charged with?" Alexis's serious hazel eyes probed hers until Elizabeth managed a nod. "Okay. So I don't need to go over that."

The brunette swallowed roughly and gripped the back of the cold metal chair with both hands because she honestly thought she was going to go crazy if she didn't. "What kind of evidence do they have against him? What are we looking at?"

The lawyer pursed her lips and considered the question. She flared her nostrils three times before replying; any less would have undermined the gravity of the news. "Lorenzo Alcazar was a very paranoid man."

Elizabeth nodded slowly. "I know. Spinelli and I came across all of his surveillance measures during one of our challenges."

"Then you know that he has security footage of every inch of his property," Alexis replied, arching one dark brow. "And that the footage is immediately exported to a hard drive and sent off to his contacts in the government and the local authorities should anything happen to him."

Fighting the sinking feeling in her stomach, Elizabeth nodded. "Yeah."

"The incident occurred late last night, early this morning." Alexis flipped her hair over her shoulder and tipped her chin up in the air, a peculiar tick of hers that she always employed when she was talking in 'allegedly' while knowing that the reports were true. "Lorenzo Alcazar's servants and household staff were just finishing up their shifts and the second shift was coming in for the next day. It was the most convenient time for anyone who wished Alcazar harm to act."

Elizabeth nodded impatiently. "Go on."

Alexis's nostrils flared three more times. "The job was quick, clean, and very efficient. A silencer was used, and the body was dragged out. But there was a snag in the plan: someone saw Jason on the premises and called the cops. From what I hear, Jason only barely managed to get away in an unmarked car driven by an unidentified man."

_Ritchie_, Elizabeth thought. He was the best defensive driver on the Corinthos-Morgan team and almost always accompanied Jason on hits to make sure they made a clean getaway. It was thanks to him that Jason had only caught a bullet in the leg that night on assignment instead of getting hurt worse.

"The police investigated the call and searched the house. Presumably, security footage had already been sent over to the DA. They issued the warrant and arrested Jason a little after ten o'clock at Kelly's."

Elizabeth's sapphire eyes met Alexis's hazel ones directly, without flinching.

The lawyer let out a slow, calming breath through her nose. "Jason allegedly killed Lorenzo Alcazar, and now DA Baldwin has something that can put him away."

She felt her blood run cold and drain out of her face, but Elizabeth had to know. "For how long?"

Alexis had never been one to spare her a necessary detail. "Twenty-five to life. Without parole."

A flash of sympathy and remorse flickered through her hazel eyes as the older woman watched Elizabeth turn remarkably pale. Lips parted in shock, the brunette numbly pulled the chair that she had been gripping out from the table and sank into it.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you that, honey," she said quietly, backing toward the door. "But I plan on fighting this, and so does Sonny. And I know you do, too."

She tapped her file on the table as Elizabeth gazed blankly up at her. "I'm going to file a motion to get him out on bail, and I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything back. Just hang in there."

Alexis pulled the door open, touched her finger to her nose, and stepped out into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind her. Still numb and unable to move, Elizabeth remained seated at the little metal conference table. She sat and sat, and as she sat, she thought.

And thought.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Alexis is the best," Sonny was repeating for both Jason and Spinelli's benefit. After all, neither man had been in town when the brilliant lawyer had been hired on. "She's sharp, she's merciless, she's-"

"Obsessive-compulsive," Spinelli filled in.

Sonny gave him a sharp look. "That has nothing to do with her legal expertise. She's brilliant, and she won't rest until she's exhausted every trick in her book. She knows how important it is to get Jason out of here, and she's committed to making sure that happens."

"She's not a miracle worker, Sonny," Jason replied slowly. He wasn't a naïve man: he knew exactly what he was up against and had a pretty good idea of the likelihood of him getting off scot-free.

His best friend glared superciliously at him. "She's damn close. And she knows exactly what she's doing."

He didn't look too convinced, so Sonny felt compelled to explain. "Look, Alexis and I have been working together in this town for a very long time. The first case she ever took on here was Elizabeth's emancipation, and then I hired her as my attorney not too long after that. She knows the ins and outs of the business – very general stuff," he added when Jason's eyes snapped to his.

"And she knows how I work and how I like things done. This isn't the first time she's gone up against Scott. She knows how his mind works and she knows the kinds of tricks he's willing to pull just to come out on top. She knows how to push his buttons and how to get him to crack. You couldn't have asked for a better woman to get you out of this."

Spinelli nodded emphatically. "And remember, Stone Cold, no matter what happens, I've got your back. If Our Lady Litigator can't come through, you couldn't have asked for a better _Jackal_ to get you out of this."

He had to say it; after all, Spinelli couldn't for one minute let Jason think that there might be a woman out there other than Alexis that could help him out. Especially not that stupid Dragon.

But apparently his beloved mentor's thoughts had already strayed in that direction. "Does – Does Elizabeth know what happened?"

Sonny exchanged looks with Spinelli. "Uh…She was the first one Ritchie told when he got back to Harborview. I gave her the details when she and Spinelli came over, and she was right behind us on our way over here."

Jason instinctively glanced at the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of her through the glass, but there was no one there. Sonny noticed the flicker of recognition, and he noticed when it faded away, and the older man cleared his throat uneasily.

"I'm sure she's on her way," he tried, not quite knowing what else to say.

Spinelli, too, was having an awkward time coming up with an explanation. "Maybe, uh, something came up," he muttered almost inaudibly.

Jason leaned back in his chair, his cuffed hands now in his lap, nodded, and looked away.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It was always awkward facing someone who had just received very bad news, and that was why Georgie Jones wasn't quite sure what to say when she looked up from behind the counter and saw Elizabeth Webber walk into Kelly's.

The older brunette had to know that just an hour ago, her alleged boyfriend and alleged hitman had been arrested right where she was standing. She _had_ to know that. The whole town did! But here she was anyway, looking remarkably composed and put together in a pair of gray slacks and a purple button-down blouse. She looked…just like she looked any other day.

And that was why Georgie met her gaze firmly and honestly and shoved all awkward thoughts from her mind. Elizabeth had always been kind to her – and if she hadn't been kind, she certainly hadn't been unkind – and she'd have more than enough people waiting in line to rub salt in the wounds.

"Good morning, what can I get you?"

She didn't even glance at the menu options. "A number seven on rye to go, no onions. Iced tea, cheese fries, and…that blueberry muffin. Hash browns with a couple of things of barbeque sauce, one of those sealed fruit parfait things, and an apple turnover. Those barbequed chips, too. All to go."

Georgie swallowed and began to methodically pack the items away after giving the fry cook the order. She handed Elizabeth the partially filled bag and waited, shuffling her feet awkwardly.

"Elizabeth?"

The brunette's eyes met hers evenly, though a touch indifferently. "What is it, Georgie?"

"I'm sorry to hear about what happened."

Something – a flicker of amusement, or irritation, maybe – ran through her dark eyes. "Are you?"

It was ridiculous, really, the whole exchange: the police commissioner's daughter telling a well-known mob miss that she was sorry for a recent arrest. And while Georgie wasn't sorry that her father and his men had taken a wanted man off the streets, she was sorry that Elizabeth and Jason weren't able to be together at the moment.

They really did make a very nice couple.

"Yes, I am," she replied in a quiet voice.

The corner of Elizabeth's mouth curved. Up or down, Georgie couldn't tell, but some of the pressure in her chest lifted when the brunette returned with an equally quiet, "Thank you."

She nodded and looked away, busying herself with refilling the sugar canisters while Elizabeth waited for her order. Georgie was just beginning to wish that Kelly's didn't have a made-to-order policy on its food when Lulu Spencer walked out of the ladies' restroom and spotted her old nemesis standing by the counter.

"Hey, careful, careful," she crooned, sauntering over with her hands tucked in her pockets in a false gesture of harmlessness. "Are you allowed to be on the streets? Isn't Taggert coming after you next?"

Elizabeth smiled sweetly. "He will if you don't get out of my face in the next ten seconds."

Lulu's brows lifted. "Oh, yeah? Why?"

"Because he'll have to charge me with assault for ramming my fist through that new nose Daddy just bought you."

Georgie almost choked on her saliva when Lulu gasped and instantly raised her hand to cover her nose.

"How did-"

The brunette laughed easily and turned, taking her now complete order from Georgie and thanking her with a generous tip. "There's very little I don't know about your family, little girl," she preened, breezing easily past the stunned blonde. "And if you know what's good for you, you'll keep your twit mouth shut and leave me alone."

That was all she said. After all, she didn't have time to stand around and trade insults with some stupid little girl that thought she owned the town. Not when Elizabeth had so much work ahead of her.


	42. Chapter 42

_Previously – Jason is arrested; Elizabeth speaks with Alexis; Sonny and Spinelli reassure Jason; Jason inquires about Elizabeth's lack of presence; Elizabeth picks up a large order at Kelly's and determines to get to work immediately._

Hack | 42

Sonny let himself into the interrogation room where Spinelli was keeping Jason company just in time to pick up the tail end of their conversation.

"Spinelli," Jason sighed, squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose, "I don't know how to make you understand this, but if you die in Canada, you die in real life."

The boy didn't look convinced. "But-"

"Guys."

Both of them looked up at him, and Sonny let out a slow, deliberate breath. "Jason, you've been denied bail."

Spinelli looked crushed, but Jason didn't appear surprised at all.

"You'll be held at the PCPD," Sonny continued gently. "They say you're a flight risk and Alexis tried to argue that you have responsibilities and…attachments here, that you wouldn't be able to pick up and leave, but they didn't buy it."

Alexis had done a brilliant job, from what he'd heard. She had argued that Mister Morgan had returned from a long stint abroad and was certainly in no hurry to pick up and leave again. She had also brought up one Damien Spinelli, stating that the boy depended on Mister Morgan for support and that Mister Morgan took these responsibilities very seriously.

And as a last-ditch effort, she'd even cited the reports on Page Six and claimed that Mister Morgan had made other attachments in town and that his picking up and leaving abruptly was extremely, extremely unlikely and simply put, ridiculous in light of these…other attachments.

It hadn't worked.

"Scott wants to string you up," Sonny sighed, taking a seat across from his old friend. "He's going to turn this into a media circus and ride your conviction to reelection. That's his plan."

"But we're not going to let that happen, right?" Spinelli asked urgently. "Right?"

"Right," the mobster confirmed evenly. "We'll do whatever it takes. Jason, I'm going to get to work putting something in motion to get you out. But you'll have to stick it out here until that's finalized."

Jason nodded absently, thinking now about the ramifications of Sonny's plan. Sure, it would get him out of jail, but it would also get him out of Port Charles. If he agreed to let Sonny break him out, that would mean that he wouldn't ever be able to show his face in the city – or even the country – again. He'd have to go into hiding. Maybe he'd stay at the island, maybe he'd go abroad and live under the protection of an assumed identity. In any case, he'd have to leave Sonny and most likely Spinelli behind.

To say nothing of Elizabeth.

He'd have to leave her behind, too. He didn't think she'd be on board with dropping her life here, agreeing never to see Sonny again, and following him off to some strange country to live out the rest of her days in rustic boredom with him.

Even if he did figure out a way to settle down in Italy.

"I'll have our contacts in the PCPD get word to you when we're ready for you to make your move," Sonny was saying. "We'll have you out of this town by nightfall."

"Sonny," Jason cut in, earning a surprised look from Spinelli who had been nodding along in earnest to all of this. "Don't do that. Yet."

The mobster arched a brow at him. "What do you mean? Jason, if we're going to do this, I've gotta get a jump on it. As soon as possible-"

"Let's keep that as our last resort," he replied evenly. "You said Alexis is a brilliant lawyer, that she can handle it. So let her handle it."

Sonny stared at him for a long moment. "You could be in here for a long time – until the trial. There will be a trial, Jason. And you might not win."

"If I don't, you can break me out then," Jason responded evenly. "Let's wait and see how this goes."

Spinelli gaped at him, not believing a word of this. "Stone Cold, you'll be in _here_ until then. You'll be in jail. You can't be in jail! You belong in the sunshine, free as a bird, frolicking in the meadows-"

Jason glared at him. "Spinelli, I don't frolic."

"You _could_ frolic."

"I will _never_ frolic."

The boy pouted. "Fine."

Sonny rolled his eyes and reached for the door. "Listen, I have to talk to Alexis and see if I can call in some favors, so I'm going back to the penthouse. I'll be back as soon as possible, okay?"

Jason nodded and waited until his best friend had left the room before turning to Spinelli. "Hey."

The boy was immediately alert to his beloved mentor's smallest command. "Yes, Stone Cold?"

He tipped his head toward the door. "Go with him."

Spinelli turned around, stared at the door, then stared at Jason. "Go with him?" he parroted.

Jason nodded once. "I want you to go home and get some sleep. You're not helping me by sitting here," he added when the boy opened his mouth to protest. "Go home, sleep, and have something to eat. I don't want you hanging around here needlessly for Taggert or the other cops to harass. Go home."

Spinelli nodded reluctantly and slowly climbed out of his seat. "As you wish, Stone Cold."

"Er, Spinelli?"

"Yeah?"

"When you get back to Harborview…check on Elizabeth, too." Jason didn't quite meet his eyes when he issued the request. "Make sure she's…just check on her."

It wasn't what he had expected or even wanted to hear, but Spinelli nodded dutifully. "I will."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Sonny was already on the phone by the time Spinelli came over to Penthouse IV, freshly changed into his pajama bottoms and an old band t-shirt: his comfort clothes. Princess Peach was resting on the floor by the fireplace in Mister Perkins's old spot, and he quickly picked her up and carried her over to the table like a sacred vassal.

"I know Don Acerbi's on vacation," Sonny sighed, running his hand through his hair as a sign of exasperation. "I'm asking for the number to his villa…What do you mean you can't…Just put Carmine on the phone! I'll get it from him."

Spinelli tuned out his hopeful employer's bitter mumbling about incompetent help and flipped open the lid of his computer. Once it started booting up, he hopped out of his seat and headed over to the stairs.

"DRAGON!"

Sonny glared at him, but was given the direct line to Don Acerbi's Tuscan villa at the same moment so he couldn't tell Spinelli to cut it out.

Satisfied that his nemesis wasn't upstairs, Spinelli headed over to the door and poked his head into the hallway. "DRAGON!"

When no one answered, he scurried over to Penthouse II. It was bugged, after all, and if Elizabeth heard/saw him yelling she'd know to pick up the damn phone and call. "DRAGON!"

He let the door slam and slid across the hall on his new socks and threw open the door to Penthouse VI. "DRAGON!"

To his credit, he actually waited a good ten seconds before he shut the door and scurried back to Sonny's dining table. Georgie Hornsby from Kelly's had fixed him a sandwich to go and added a bag of barbequed chips at no extra cost, and he quickly tore open the wrapping and uncorked his bottle of orange soda.

Cracking his knuckles, Spinelli wiggled his fingers and held them poised over his keyboard as Princess Peach whirred to life. He couldn't waste all his time looking for that stupid Dragon; not when the Jackal had so much work to do.

~*~*~*~*~*~

At the warehouse, Elizabeth put on a fresh pot of coffee next to the food she'd amassed at Kelly's and headed back to her desk. She commanded the largest office on the underground level of the warehouse. Since it was below ground, it had become something of a bunker for her. She could work there day and night and since there were no windows, no one knew. Her phone line there was secure, her internet hook up was secure, and she only ever used her secure email address anyway (stupid Sonny still hadn't logged on to his, and she was willing to bet Jason hadn't either), so she was entirely safe.

She had also arranged her bunker to be exactly the way she liked it. She had her large antique desk, a perfect replica of the one in Sonny's penthouse, and all of her phone, fax, and computer hook ups. She had a little mini-kitchen area where she had a stove, a single-rack oven, a fridge and compact freezer, and a stainless steel sink. She had also arranged a little lounge area and covered up a cream colored futon with dozens of pink silk throw pillows, all arranged next to a furry mauve rug that felt absolutely wonderful under her bare toes.

In this room, Elizabeth Webber concocted her most wicked, most underhanded, and most illegal schemes.

Under the watchful gaze of her Felix the Cat clock and with her Hello Kitty fuzzy tip pen (a VERY misguided Sweetest Day gift from Ritchie; he'd apparently gone to the same store that Sonny had bought her coffee mug from), Elizabeth had pulled off the pinch that cast all of Atlantic City into darkness for a full minute so Sonny's men could break into an associate's guarded safe.

While listening to her exquisitely carved wooden music box, a handmade gift from Francis that played Waltzing Matilda over and over, she had created the computer virus that wiped out all of Moreno's files and effectively, his entire organization.

And while half-watching reruns of vintage Batman cartoons, she had infiltrated the government's databases and found out who really killed John F. Kennedy.

Well, okay, she hadn't done _that_, but she had infiltrated the Port Charles Prison and broken out one of Sonny's former top guards who had immediately skipped the country with his boss's help and was now living quite comfortably in a little house in Cabo.

Oh, yeah, this was the War Room.

And she was definitely geared up for battle.

"Paul, where did you put it? I need the coordinates."

She listened carefully, pressing her earpiece into her ear until it fit properly. "Okay, in Scott's office? Great. If you can do it without too much trouble, put another bug right behind the water cooler. Use the one with the happy face sticker: no one will notice it, much less figure out that there's a recording device in there."

She listened some more and nodded even though her undercover contact in the PCPD couldn't see her. "That's wonderful. Thanks, Paul. Try to switch shifts with one of the other cops so that you're there a lot until this mess with Jason is sorted out. I need you around in case something comes up."

Elizabeth listened to the other end, then rolled her eyes and clicked on the Hang Up button on her screen right after adding, "Yes, Paul, you'll be paid triple overtime. Jeez, do you and Alexis have a chat room you go to or something?"


	43. Chapter 43

Previously – Sonny tells the boys Jason was denied bail; Jason vows never to frolic; Jason tells Spinelli to check on Elizabeth; Spinelli and Sonny get to work trying to help Jason; Elizabeth sits in her war room at the warehouse and talks to her PCPD contact that just placed a bug in Scott's office. Shit is on.

**Hack | 43**

He had an epiphany.

Not the Epiphany. She was a scary nurse at the hospital, and Spinelli most certainly didn't have her. He had the amorphous, internal, not-likely-to-put-him-in-a-world-of-hurt epiphany. With the little e.

Not a little E. Because that was Ecstasy. And Spinelli didn't do Ecstasy. He would never consider disrespecting his body like that.

These were the thoughts that raced through Spinelli's head as he himself raced down to the PCPD. Mister Corinthos Sir was still at the penthouse, trying to call in some favors to pull Stone Cold's fat from the fire. (Oh, Stone Cold would have hated that expression if he were around to hear it! He had always been so proud of his 6.5% body fat, as of course compared with Spinelli's 100% body flab.)

Spinelli had been told, either by the Dragon or by the Silent Sentinels who were rarely ever silent as it turned out, that this was Sonny's pattern. He set his legal pit bull loose while he worked behind the scene to see if there were any underhanded measures he could pull as the Plan B. And then if the Lady Litigator couldn't come through for him, he put these plans into motion. He'd call in favors, bust a guy out, and then set him up pretty with a nice house and a fat check in some remote part of the world. That was how he operated.

However, Spinelli knew that wasn't good enough for Stone Cold. Stone Cold couldn't be shipped off to some tropical island to live out the rest of his days in secrecy. Because if Stone Cold was gone, that would mean that the Jackal would be tossed out on his rear and would have to live in a box in the alley. And the Jackal kind of liked his penthouse, so a box would be a serious downgrade.

And that was why he had been racking his brain for the past few hours to come up with a better way to save Stone Cold. He knew that Sonny's plans were for a little further down the road; the mobster wanted something in place early should they need to kidnap Jason and help him escape his sentence. He wanted to be prepared.

Spinelli, on the other hand, wanted a pre-emptive measure of sorts that would get his beloved mentor out before the case even got put before a judge. And so he sat at his computer for hours, trying to figure out what he could do. He tried, if he was being forced to admit it, to think like the Dragon. She had been kicking his butt in the earlier challenges (and was now ahead by three, dammit) because she looked at the big picture. She didn't get caught up in the nitty gritty of the code. She knew that once you did that, you were lost. You were already missing the forest for the grass, not even the trees, because the code was such a small part of the actual operation.

So he had done his best to think like her and look at the big picture and figure out what the smartest thing to do next would be…and now he had it.

And he was going to tell Stone Cold of his incredible progress.

He barely spared a smirky Taggert a second glance as he quickly scrawled his name on the visitors log and darted into the empty interrogation room. He had to wait a few minutes as they brought his beloved mentor over from his cell, and Spinelli felt like he was going to burst out of his skin during that short wait.

He did so love to make his mentor proud.

"I've got a plan."

The cop was barely out of the room before Spinelli blurted it out, and Jason's eyes quickly slid to the door, making sure that it was shut.

"What?"

"I have a plan," Spinelli repeated, taking a seat in front of his wise guru. "And it's awesome. Some would even say, awesome sauce."

Jason squinted at him. "What does sauce have to do with anything? We're not eating any sauce."

The boy rolled his eyes. "No, Stone Cold, it's not actual sauce."

"Then why were you talking about sauce?"

"I meant it as a figure of speech."

"Sauce isn't a figure of speech. It's sauce."

Okay, really, now his mentor was just being difficult. "Stone Cold-"

"Did you go home and get some rest like I told you to?"

Again, the boy rolled his eyes. "The Jackal does not rest when the innocent Stone Cold-"

Jason arched a brow, causing Spinelli to amend his statement. "The Jackal does not rest when the Stone Cold one is unfairly incarcerated."

Again, Jason arched a brow. And again, Spinelli amended his statement.

"Incarcerated.'

Satisfied, the enforcer shook his head. "You never do what I tell you."

"But I had something to eat," Spinelli protested. "You told me to have something to eat, so the Jackal ate."

"Did you check on Elizabeth?"

The older man's voice was perfectly even, perfectly level, but the weight of his words was evident. And Spinelli knew that if he rolled his eyes again, he'd be in for it. Stone Cold would strangle him right there, handcuffs and a room full of police officers be damned.

"I looked for the Dragon, yes," he replied quietly, tenting his fingers in front of him as he only did when he felt he was being unfairly distracted from more important events. "She was not at Mister Corinthos Sir's, she was not in our penthouse, nor was she in hers."

Jason stared at him. "What do you mean, she wasn't there?"

Okay, did love make all guys stupid? Because at times, he had to wonder.

"She was not there in form or spirit," Spinelli explained slowly, as if he were talking to a child. His mentor was not amused. "Even though her putrid stench of jasmine and the evil in her heart did linger."

It was Jason's turn to roll his eyes. "You didn't even look for her."

"I did!" Spinelli didn't mean to yell loudly, but he did. Stone Cold rarely ever questioned his word or doubted him before the Dragon slithered into their lives, and now it seemed as if that was all he ever did. "I told you that I looked for her, so I looked for her!"

"You didn't look very hard."

The boy gritted his teeth. "You're just mad because she hasn't even been in here to see you."

He realized a little too late that he shouldn't have said that. No matter how irritated he was with his mentor, he shouldn't have said that.

Because he was absolutely right.

He knew this by the way Jason stared at him, his eyes hard and clear and holding very little challenge but just enough irritation to make the boy gulp. A muscle in his mentor's jaw worked away, and his cuffed hands curled into loose fists, and then the tell-tale sign: Jason looked away.

"What was your plan?"

Spinelli blinked, thrown off center by the abrupt question. "Er, what?"

"Your plan," Jason ground out, still not looking at him. "You said you had a plan. What is your plan?"

"Oh." The boy opened and shut his mouth twice, looking like a snapping fish. "Oh, right."

Jason watched disinterestedly as Spinelli leaned forward over the table. "I plan to force the DA of Darkness's hand."

A beat of silence.

"What?"

"I plan to force his hand," Spinelli repeated. "I plan to make him set you free and clear your name 'with all the publicity with which he has besmirched it' at the peril of his own career."

"How?" Jason practically snorted. "We don't even know what he has on me. And you sure as fuck better not be quoting the damn Godfather at a time like this."

The kid gave him a superior look that only served to confirm that he was quoting the damn Godfather at a time like this. "Look, all I'm saying is that Mister Corinthos Sir can make his phone calls to the judges and line up all the favors he wants, but the Jackal's plan is a little more guaranteed to produce results."

He leaned forward a little more, and he could see by the way Jason's eyes remained trained on him that he finally had his mentor's undivided attention…and maybe confidence, too. "I will blackmail DA Baldwin. And with my hacking skills, I'll be able to do it sooner rather than later. And he will back off and let you go because I can bet good money right now that he's pulled tricks as dirty as some of yours. We'll play a bargaining game: it's the only kind these politician-public-figures understand."

Spinelli stood up from the table, a triumphant little smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. "With the Jackal on the case, Stone Cold will be free in no time."

Despite the gravity of the situation, Jason's eyes glittered. "For a second I thought you were going to say I'd be frolicking in no time."

The boy nodded seriously as he reached for the door. "Oh, I was thinking it."

~*~*~*~*~*~

At Penthouse IV, late at night…

Elizabeth let herself in and wasn't surprised to find Sonny practically passed out on the couch. She set her purse down on his desk and walked over to the wet bar to get him a glass of water.

"Have you eaten anything all day?"

He lifted his head at the sound of her voice. "What are you doing home?"

She stuck the glass of water in his face and waited for him to accept it. "Have you eaten anything today?"

"I'll get around to it," Sonny grumbled, hoisting himself up into a sitting position. He took the water from her and watched as she returned to the wet bar to pour herself a little of his brandy. "You didn't answer my question."

"I needed a change of clothes," Elizabeth replied easily, eyeing the amber liquid in the glass. She only drank brandy occasionally, but felt oddly in the mood for it now. "Also, I have some news."

"Better be good news."

"Paul at the PCPD bugged Scott's office for me." She pulled a flash drive from her pocket and waved it at him. "I have a clip of some of the audio we were able to pull. I sent a back-up copy to your secure email address, and one to Jason's, too. You know, just in case we lose data, we know where to pull it up from again."

"Yeah, I have to log into that thing," Sonny mumbled, scratching the back of his head.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "You're never going to get around to it, so you might as well stop pretending."

"I will log on," he insisted, "just as soon as this whole mess with Jason is cleared up. As soon as he's back home, I promise you can sit me down in front of the computer all day and teach me whatever stupid stuff you have to."

"It's not stupid," she started to argue before she remembered herself and her reason for coming. "Do you want to know what Scott has on Jason or not?"

Sonny's eyes snapped to hers so fast that Elizabeth was actually thankful the old man was sitting down. "What does he have?"

"He has surveillance footage of Jason pulling off the hit and dragging the body away."

A long pause.

"Oh."

She nodded grimly. "It's the only footage, from what I can tell. Jason was smart enough to get all the other cameras he could, but this one was hidden very well. It was a lot like one of the devices me and Stan would use. He couldn't have found it. And you don't see him pull off the hit, really. You see him from the waist down, and you see a man's legs, and then the man falls, and Jason drags the body away. You can kind of see the face when he does that. I don't think Alexis would get very far arguing that it's some other guy in Alcazar's house who just happens to look like Alcazar."

Sonny was nodding slowly and in rhythm, looking an awful lot like one of those Bobble-head dolls that Max collected. "Oh."

"The footage was compiled and archived onto the disk and shipped out. It's the only copy that exists."

He was still nodding. "Oh."

Elizabeth watched him for a long moment before she slowly skirted past the couch and retrieved her purse. "Try to get some sleep, okay, Sonny? And get some food."

That snapped him out of it. "You – You should get something to eat, too," Sonny croaked out, trying to pick himself up off the couch. "I could make you something-"

She waved off his concern. "Don't. I'll stop by Kelly's and get a bunch of food, I promise. Just eat something and get some sleep, okay? I'll check in with you in the morning."

She was almost out the door when he called her name.

"Elizabeth."

She turned her face the smallest fraction of an inch to her right. "Yeah?"

"Are you on this?" Sonny's obsidian eyes probed hers even though she wasn't making eye contact. "A hundred and ten?"

Elizabeth nodded, slowly at first and then more firmly. "Yeah, I am. A hundred and ten."

And as Sonny watched her leave, he knew it was wrong, and he knew it was just a little pathetic of him, but hearing that made him feel so much better.


	44. Chapter 44

Previously – Spinelli points out that Liz hasn't even been in to see Jason; Spinelli says he plans to blackmail Scott Baldwin; Elizabeth tells Sonny what the DA has on Jason and then tells him she's on it.

**Note – **These are short chapters, huh? I didn't feel like I could add the next part to this; that would be better in its own section. Also, today marks the FIRST ANNUAL LIASON EVENT (FALE)!!! :D I'm so excited! Steve, Becky, and my favorite Canvas girls (some of them, anyway) all in one day, in one place!

I shall attend wearing my slacks, a blue sweater, and my green I LOVE NERDS hat. :| It has been decided. It's out of my hands, really.

Hack | 44At the warehouse in the late hours of the night and/or early hours of the morning…

Semi-colons.

Tricky little marks of punctuation; they existed only to vex people. Really, who ever used them?

Elizabeth let out a disgruntled sigh as she forced her bleary eyes to remain faithfully trained on the computer screen. She did. She used semi-colons. Hell, she even used semi-colons when she was instant messaging with Spinelli. He did, too. They were both _such_ nerds.

But now those semi-colons were exacting their revenge because somewhere in her preliminary code, there were two that had gone missing. And because of those truant semi-colons, her program was refusing to go through a trial run.

She had spent the last few hours after returning from Harborview very wisely. Her little bunker was in full functioning mode, and she was a machine. She had changed into the clean clothes she had retrieved from her penthouse, set on yet another pot of coffee (she really was very lucky to be the former ward of a coffee salesman), unwrapped yet another sandwich from Kelly's, and finished up writing down her preliminary notes for the first version of her program.

It was a trick she'd picked up from Spinelli. A good habit, really. He once told her that he went through notebook after notebook outlining notes for his programs before he even started typing. He said it was a good way to organize your thoughts, group your code paragraphs, figure out exactly what you wanted to do, and then see how to streamline the process.

So she had tried it once a while ago and found that the nerd actually knew what he was talking about. It was much easier to organize her code when she could do it on paper on index cards. If she got stuck, she could always rip the paper into paragraph strips or move the index cards around so she had a better sense of the order of things. And then she could pick up from there.

And that was what Elizabeth was doing now. She had just finished her notation and now had three pages, front to back, of code chunks and little side notes. Now she was starting to type it out, bit by bit, and run the individual programs and little chunks and then put them together, piece by piece, until she had her complete program.

Or rather, until she had her complete virus.

But she had run into a problem: semi-colons. The red-headed step-siblings of decent colons.

And she had been poring over her screen for longer than she could remember, trying to figure out where the missing punctuation marks were, and where she had goofed on the syntax. So long, in fact, that the letters were all running together and the glare of the screen was making her see dark green spots everywhere.

Yeah, that probably wasn't a good sign.

With a sigh, Elizabeth pushed her chair away from the desk and stood, rubbing her eyes. The sudden movement made her a little dizzy; after all, she had spent the past few hours doing nothing but sitting on her rear and clicking away on the keyboard.

She managed to shake it off and stumbled over to the sink to dispose of her cold coffee. It would be useless to sit here and try to figure the code out at this point: she just didn't have it in her. No, the best thing to do would be to go home, shower, change, check in with Sonny and the nerd (Ha! Like Pinky and the Brain! Those two should have had their own theme song or something), and then put the other pieces of her plan in motion.

Her head began to slowly clear as Elizabeth loaded the dishwasher and ran it, then went about gathering up the plastic scraps and wrappings strewn about her office. Doing work in the kitchen always helped clear her head; that was why she loved cooking and more so, cooking with Sonny, so much.

As the dishwasher gurgled and whirred, Elizabeth moved back over to her desk and sat on the edge, reaching for the phone. Mister Perkins went ignored behind her.

"Yeah."

"Nikolas?" She nibbled her lip and switched the phone to her other ear. "Hey, I didn't wake you, did I?"

"…No."

"I did," Elizabeth winced. "Sorry."

"Well, it's perfectly all right so long as you have a good reason. Do you? Have a good reason, that is?"

"Actually, yeah. I need your help."

A brief pause, and then she heard the sheets rustle and she could picture Nikolas sitting up in bed. _"What for?"_

"It's about Jason."

Another pause. Then, _"What can I do?"_

A small smile, the first one she had smiled since she found out that her boyfriend had been dragged off in handcuffs, pulled at her lips. Jason was a fool if he ever doubted the strength of his friendship with Nikolas; even when the two of them were at odds personally, the Cassidine Prince was always ready to help him when the need arose.

"What you do best," she smirked. "I need you to be a royal jackass."

~*~*~*~*~*~

At Harborview Towers several hours later…

That had to be the quickest shower she had ever taken. Seriously, Elizabeth was thinking Guinness Book of World Records, here.

She was the first to admit that, yeah, she had her weaknesses. And one of them was super-hot, super-long showers. She was an educated young woman living in the United States, and she knew full well the state of the environment and natural resources and the approaching threat of global warming and all that socio-political-contraceptive stuff.

But she still liked her long, hot showers. They soothed her aching muscles, especially today, and they made her feel awake and energized – _especially_ when she shared those super-hot and super-long showers with Jason, who made sure those showers were extra hot and _very_ long.

And today, she was in dire need of such a shower. It was a shame that Jason was away and unable to service those particular needs of hers, but the water still helped relax her tight, stiff muscles. Sitting in a chair all day long was definitely _not_ good for a body.

So, freshly laundered and dressed in a pretty emerald tea-length dress, dressed down with a short denim jacket, Elizabeth let herself into Penthouse IV to check on Pinky and the Brain.

Pinky was eating Flaming Hot Cheerios and getting the red powder all over Princess Peach, and the Brain was on the phone. Big surprise there – he was probably trying to take over the world.

Okay, she had to stop. It was getting sad.

"Still trying to call in favors?" she asked, setting her clutch purse down on the dining table. Sonny glared at her and waved her away, turning his back so that he could hear better.

"Good of you to show, Dragon," Spinelli grumbled, sending a particularly dark look her way. "Descending from on high to mingle with the commoners?"

"First, only morons quote the _Lion King._"

"That is the single best children's adaptation of _Hamlet_ this world has ever seen-"

"And second, yes," Elizabeth snipped, giving him a playful shrug. "I'm visiting you, aren't I?"

But the barb didn't land. Spinelli just gave her a hard look and squared his jaw. "Too bad the same can't be said of Stone Cold, huh?"

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed as the boy turned to his computer once more, ignoring her completely. She had been given the direct cut by a stupid, snippy little nerd! Rather than dignify his pissy little comment, she looked across the table and tried to get Sonny's attention.

She was rewarded when he heaved a huge sigh and slammed the phone back down onto the cradle. "What's going on?"

Sonny scowled darkly and reached for his half-finished glass of brandy, downing it in one impressive go. The last place he wanted to be right now was at his penthouse. Unfortunately, however, he couldn't very well leave. And that made any trips to the PCPD out of the question.

So instead of going straight over there, first thing in the morning, and telling his best friend that Elizabeth was on the job, one-hundred and ten percent, and he'd be out very soon, he was stuck here answering the phone for a bunch of whiny little bitches in custom-made suits.

God, he hated the idiots he had to work with.

"Facing the firing squad."

Elizabeth winced as the phone rang again. "That bad, huh?"

Sonny rolled his eyes and let it ring. "I've been fielding calls from the Five Families all morning. Hold on a minute."

He picked up the phone and held it to his ear. "Yeah?…That's fine. Yes, I understand, but I don't think there's any use to me repeating the same thing to twenty different people…That's fine, Sammy, we'll do the conference call…Yes, you can call me back. I'll be here."

His lips settled into a grim line as he hung up again. "They've been calling all morning. First it was Don Gimignano. Then I got a call from Don Salvatore's enforcer, Raphael. He's in charge now, you know."

Elizabeth blinked. "I had not known that."

"Well, he is. Then I got a call from Carmine, then from Enzo, then from Natanaele, and just now from Tagliati." He sat down at the head of the table and scrubbed his hands over his face. "And I had to give them the same song and dance about how, yes, even though Jason's been arrested and is facing possible conviction, the organization is still strong and all of that."

She winced and rested her arms on the back of the chair. "Ouch. They're really riding you, huh?"

He nodded wearily. "Yeah. They're calling me back, all of them together, and we're probably due for an impromptu meeting to discuss what measures should be taken."

"Excuse me?"

Sonny rolled his eyes, obviously sharing her disbelief. "Let's just say that the Families are very concerned about Jason being locked up."

"But he's not-" She stopped before she could embarrass herself and smoothly changed course. "They do realize you've been running this business on your own for six years, right? And since before you met Jason?"

He shrugged and slumped back in his seat. "Those idiots have goldfish memory. All they think is that my right-hand-man is behind bars, and that means that I'm weak and my organization is weak."

Sonny's obsidian eyes lifted to hers. "And ripe for the picking."

Elizabeth let out a particularly unlady-like snort. "Let them think that. They can just eat it when Jason is freed."

"Exactly," Spinelli murmured smugly, still typing away on Princess Peach.

Both Sonny and Elizabeth ignored him. Sonny, to his credit, knew that Spinelli was trying to dig up dirt on DA Baldwin to use in their favor. And he figured that as long as the kid was looking, it couldn't hurt. He'd have to go through Sonny to make the actual threat and carry out the blackmail, so it was all good. Elizabeth, on the other hand, honestly could not have cared less what the little nerd was up to.

"I'm going to tell them the same thing: the organization is fine, and Jason will be out soon enough," Sonny affirmed. "I think what they're actually worried about, though, is that this won't be the end of our legal troubles. Scott's been gearing up for a war recently and this is his first move. When Jason's freed, he'll just come after us again. And again, and again, as many times as it takes. I think that's what the Families are worried about: that the law enforcement in Port Charles is going to really crack down and we won't be able to run our business."

"And then they'll move in, take over the routes, and control the territories from their own perches," Elizabeth finished. "They won't even have to deal with Scott or the Mayor because they won't be in Port Charles at all. It makes sense. Good luck talking them down."

He nodded absently, staring at the phone but appearing to not even see it. "What are you doing back? Did you eat lunch yet?"

She nodded. "Yeah, I had a quick bite just now. Don't worry, I promise I'm eating."

Not like their last crisis, when Jason had been shot in the leg and she'd gone almost a full day once without anything more than a glass of orange juice. Yeah, she was never going to do something that stupid again: if she was weak and tired and undernourished, she'd be of no use to anyone much less herself.

"Are you coming back for dinner?" Sonny asked hopefully, causing Spinelli to actually look up from behind his screen. "I can't make anything because I have to meet with the guys and do kind of a staff briefing, but I thought we could order in pizza."

But Elizabeth shook her head and ran a hand through her carefully arranged curls. "I can't. I'm having dinner with Jax tonight."

Sonny nodded and was distracted from any further questions when the telephone rang. Spinelli, on the other hand, was almost certain he'd heard wrong. Almost. And it was more like he hoped he heard wrong, and that the Dragon hadn't actually admitted aloud to having a dinner date with Jasper Jacks.

But as she picked up her purse, shook out her chestnut curls, and adjusted her flirty, strappy black sandals, Spinelli was letting go of his hopes. Because Elizabeth definitely wasn't all dolled up like that to go visit Jason, who'd meet her in his prison blues.

And he could only watch in shock and disgust as she sauntered out the door, only too ready to step out on his beloved mentor at the first sign of trouble.

And that slow-mounting rage only made Spinelli more determined to bust Stone Cold out of prison so that his mentor could get rid of the cunning Delilah once and for all.


	45. Chapter 45

Previously – Elizabeth works on her code and recruits Nikolas's help; after making ground with her code, Elizabeth returns to Harborview and gets dolled up; Sonny has to deal with the Five Families and their concerns; Spinelli is shocked and appalled when he learns that Elizabeth has a date with Jasper Jacks.

**Note – **I received so many lovely comments about this story at FALE, and I'm very appreciative of that. :) Here's to all the fabulous gals that I met at Zanies! And here's to next year!

And here's to Amanda, and our long-winded fic conversations while we tried to convince ourselves we were lost on the highway. Love you tons, and next time you're here, you're sleeping over! We'll have an Animaniacs/TinyToons/TheOffice/ArrestedDevelopment party…and we just might invite my twippy brother.

Hack | 45

Edward Quartermaine poked his head into his son's office at General Hospital and frowned at the others gathered there. "Alan? Where's Alan?"

"I'm right here, Father," the chief of staff replied wearily from his desk. Monica, who had been blocking him from view, moved aside and perched on the corner of the escritoire. "What do you want?"

"A fine thing," he huffed, nodding at Steve and Audrey who both stood in front of Alan's handsome leather armchairs. "You have me summoned to the hospital and you want to know what _I_ want. I'll have you know that I was just about to enjoy a perfectly lovely spot of tea with your mother out on the terrace when Emily comes rushing in and tells me that you need my presence immediately at the hospital. And for what, I couldn't possibly-"

Alan frowned at him. "Wait a moment – Father, I didn't call you here. Emily told me that you wanted to meet me and Monica here."

"And we got the same message from one of the new candystripers," Audrey affirmed, gesturing to herself and her husband. "Well, this is certainly odd."

Edward looked around the room, his eyes beady and suspicious under his bushy brows. "I certainly didn't call any of you here; _I_ don't even want to be here. So that begs the question, who gathered us all together in the same room?"

"Colonel Mustard," came a wry voice from the doorway, and all five doctors turned around to see Elizabeth slip quietly in. "In the observatory with a lead pipe."

"Elizabeth?" Steve Hardy could only gape at his youngest grandchild. It was common knowledge that Elizabeth _hated_ General Hospital and had never once come in willingly – or conscious, for that matter. But here she was, dressed in a charming emerald dress and looking just the slightest bit pale. "You?"

"Sure seems like it," the brunette replied with false brightness. "I wanted to speak to all of you, and this was the only place where I knew you'd all come together."

No one addressed the fact that they knew she'd rather be dead than be here. Instead, Steve scratched his head and looked around the room. "Yes, we're here, to be sure, but what about your parents?"

"Jeff and Carolyn are a waste of time," Elizabeth replied disinterestedly. No one in the room bothered to contradict her. "They'd only cause a scene and try to distract me from what I actually came here to do."

Monica arched a brow at the young woman rumored to be madly in love with her presently incarcerated son. "And that would be?"

Elizabeth gazed directly back at Alan, his wife, and Edward. "You know that Jason's in prison."

They nodded slowly, each one looking to the next to say the first word. "…We do."

She nodded pertly. "And you know that we want for him _not_ to be in prison."

"…We do."

"And you know that we're willing to do just about anything in our power to get him out."

Edward let out a little huff. "Oh, everyone knows that. So tell me, dear, when is the expected jailbreak? At least give us a little advance notice so we can throw my prodigal grandson a party."

Elizabeth ignored him. "I'm not here to discuss Jason's predicament any further, or the charges being pressed against him. I'm only here with a business proposition."

Now she had their interest.

"Edward, you've been after the warehouse properties along Pier 52 for years," she started, leveling a hard look at the old man. "You know they'd be a valuable addition to your holdings and your portfolio, and they would make it easier to store and ship the various products ELQ provides to its consumers."

Edward nodded warily. "Yes, get on with it."

"For years now, Sonny has made it a point not to sell," Elizabeth continued lightly, exacting no small measure of satisfaction from being able to rankle him so. "He has rejected every single generous offer you've made."

The old man scowled darkly. "Yes, and what of it?"

Elizabeth's dark eyes glittered, prompting her grandfather to gaze at her with renewed interest. "Do you still want the warehouses along Pier 52?"

Edward looked at Alan and Monica, both of whom stared blankly back at him, and then his shrewd eyes returned to those of the girl almost four times younger than him. "Yes."

The corner of Elizabeth's mouth twitched and she calmly opened up her black clutch and pulled out a folded piece of paper, holding it out to Edward until he took it. "I am prepared to offer you Pier 52 for this price."

Edward looked down at the unfolded scrap, and his eyes bugged out when he saw fewer zeroes than he had expected. "What?"

Elizabeth nodded once. "You heard me. You can have Pier 52 for that price."

His eyes narrowed. "What's the catch?"

She didn't insult either of them by pretending there wasn't one. "You, Alan, and Monica will hold a joint press conference with Audrey and Steve. I will give you the exact time, and I will let you know what to say. In return, Pier 52 is yours for the agreed-upon price."

Edward actually looked pleased with the offer, as did Alan and Monica, but Steve and Audrey were both a little confused.

"Excuse me, Elizabeth?" Audrey Hardy sniffed lightly as she waited for her granddaughter to acknowledge her. "Why would we agree to this?"

"We have nothing to do with Pier 52 or anything of the sort," Steve pointed out. "That incentive is fine for Edward, but we don't have any vested interest in it. Why would we hold this joint press conference? What are you prepared to offer _us_?"

He didn't mean it as materialistically as it came off, but Elizabeth didn't particularly care.

She lifted her shoulder in reply and met their gaze with candor. "Myself."

~*~*~*~*~*~

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom and great hacking prowess, it was the age of mind-numbing stupidity. It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity.

Spinelli knew he sounded, and this was entirely likely, like a man who had read too much Dickens.

But he couldn't help it. As he raced over to the PCPD with Princess Peach in her case tucked against his side, his mind whirled with the new developments.

He had something. He had an honest-to-goodness Oh-no-he-di'int on Scott Baldwin, the Dastardly DA of Darkness. And it was made of win. And he couldn't _wait_ to share it with Jason.

True, he was still waiting on some image files to come through, and a certain falsified death certificate, but Spinelli figured that this one was in the bag. Ten years ago, just as he was coming into office, Scott Baldwin had someone killed on the down-low. He framed a small time street thug who got sentenced to life, and let him rot in prison even though he could have easily pulled a few strings and gotten the man a pardon from Mayor Garrett Floyd. But he didn't. And that man had died in prison for a crime that Scott Baldwin committed.

And as soon as Spinelli turned the information over to Sonny so that he could go to the DA with it, his beloved mentor was as good as out of there. And it would all be thanks to him, instead of that stupid Dragon who was out on her damn dinner date.

And there it was: the one thing that put a damper on his otherwise celebratory visit to Stone Cold's cell.

Spinelli still couldn't believe that Elizabeth would agree to have dinner with Jasper Jacks while Jason was in prison. He still highly doubted that it was an actual date: he'd actually managed to come to that conclusion once he'd calmed down. It probably wasn't a date because Jax was an intelligent and affable man, far too sensible and decent to ever like the Dragon in any sort of romantic way.

But she was still going out to dinner with that guy without even a second thought to Stone Cold, whom she hadn't visited at all. And that was what sucked so bad about the stupid Dragon.

But no matter how much it sucked, Spinelli had decided that he would not breathe a word of it to his beloved mentor. Nary a peep would he utter about the horrible turn of events. Peeping? Totally out of the question.

Because the fact remained that Stone Cold cared about the Dragon. Spinelli didn't know _why_, but he knew that Stone Cold did. And being cooped up in prison, unable to frolic, was bad enough for the man; he didn't need to know that his kinda-sorta-majorly-in-denial girlfriend was out having dinner with one of his business associates. Jason had actually been handling his stint in prison pretty well up until now, but Spinelli knew that if he found out about the Dragon, that would be the end of that.

And as much as Spinelli absolutely hated Elizabeth for potentially hurting his mentor and the only family he'd ever had, he wasn't about to out her because that would cause Stone Cold pain. And that was the last thing Spinelli ever wanted to do to the man that had given him more kindness and support than he could ever repay.

So there would be no mention of Elizabeth. Absolutely none.

"You are going to love me."

Jason rolled his eyes as he brought his cuffed hands up to rest on the tabletop. "Careful. That's what got us in trouble with that Belgian model."

Spinelli grinned wickedly. "She was hot, wasn't she?"

The corner of Jason's mouth quirked up, giving him quite a impious air, but then he quickly sobered. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to tell you that my plan is working." He could barely contain his glee as Jason leaned forward. "I have _major_ dirt on the DA of Darkness, Stone Cold. When I turn it over to Mister Corinthos Sir so that he can threaten to go public with it, Scott Baldwin won't have any choice but to let you go."

Jason's brows shot up. "…So what are you waiting for?"

Spinelli made a face. "Well, I don't have all the evidence in yet. I have most of it," he added hurriedly when Jason sat back in his chair. "But I still need to wait on some grainy surveillance shots that I know exist, and I'm in the process of hacking into the database where I can get the death certificate that the DA dummied up to put an innocent man behind bars in lieu of himself."

"So go do it," Jason urged, tipping his head toward the door. "Go hack or do whatever it is you do on the computer. And give it to Sonny as soon as you're done – let him handle it. Go."

Spinelli stood so quickly he almost kicked his chair over and gave his mentor a quick salute. "Aye, aye, Sir Stone Cold Sir. The Jackal is on his way to complete this most arduous task."

He already had his hand on the doorknob when Jason called out to him. "If you get stuck, have Elizabeth help you. I bet she'd be able to."

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. "Yeah, when she gets back from her date."

Jason Morgan must have been superhuman, because it would have taken bionic ears to pick up those garbled, mumbled words. But somehow, he did.

His voice when he spoke was pure ice, and Spinelli stopped cold. "What did you say?"

"…I said, yeah, so I won't be late." That kind of rhymed with his stupid, stupid, _stupid_ slip.

Jason wasn't buying it, and for some reason Spinelli's legs were ignoring the RUN MORON RUN commands coming directly from his brain, underused organ that it was.

"Spinelli."

He gulped but didn't make another sound.

"Turn around."

He didn't move.

"Spinelli, turn around right now or I won't be responsible for what I do next."

Feeling like his knees were knocking together, the boy did as he was told and met his mentor's furious gaze. "…Hi."

Jason slowly got up from his seat and walked around the flimsy table, looking more like a tiger closing in on its fresh kill than the boy's trusted guardian. "Repeat what you said about Elizabeth."

Gulping, all Spinelli could do was look up helplessly into the enforcer's stormy eyes.

Apparently, that response did not go over well.

Before he could even draw in another breath, Jason's cuffed hands grabbed the lapels of his shirt and hauled him up close so that they stood almost nose-to-nose, with Spinelli actually rising up on his toes due to Jason's hold on him.

"Spinelli-"

The guard stationed outside had spotted Jason and burst into the room, ready to defend the innocent visitor from the wrath of a caged criminal. "Hey! No touching! No touching!"

"-Say it!"

The boy wheezed and waved the guard away, managing to croak out, "It's okay, it's okay." The officer, unsure of what to do, watched warily as Jason begrudgingly set the kid down, but made not move to remove his hands from Spinelli's shirt. "You can go now, really."

"I'll be right outside," he muttered gruffly, glaring daggers at Jason as if he wished he had been allowed to shoot him on the spot. Trigger happy apes, that was what the PCPD was stocked full of.

Spinelli pried Jason's fingers off his shirt one by one. "Stone Cold, you know better than anyone that I say stupid things. You don't even know what I'm saying half the time. Heck, half the time, even I don't what I'm saying. Stone Cold! I don't know what I'm saying!"

But Jason wasn't having any of that. "I heard you say something about Elizabeth and a date. Repeat it, or that guard out there will have to add assault to my charges."

Spinelli swallowed roughly and closed his eyes. "It's nothing, really. The Dragon was just overheard telling Mister Corinthos Sir that…she had dinner plans tonight."

Jason's eyes narrowed lethally. "With who?"

"…Jasper Jacks?"

Silence.

And then Jason let out a string of dirty words that he'd never quite put together in _that_ order in front of Spinelli before, causing the boy to pull back and fairly plaster himself against the door, his only viable escape.

"That son of a bitch-"

"It's just dinner," Spinelli felt compelled to explain. "It's no big deal, really!"

Jason's scowl indicated that he clearly was not of the same opinion.

"It's just dinner," Spinelli repeated again, slower this time. "Look, Stone Cold, the Dragon has never given any indication that she's ever been even remotely interested in Jax."

Well, that was certainly the truth. So Spinelli forged on.

"And Jax has never given any indication that he's even remotely interested in her," he continued, his resolve very slowly building as he laid out the logical steps for his mentor's benefit. "He's not her type, and she's not his. Plus, he works with you and he probably reads Page Six and he seems like a good enough guy so you gotta figure that dinner with him is just going to be dinner."

Yeah, that was actually probably true.

Spinelli perked up a bit, feeling better about the whole situation. "And remember how long it took for the Dragon to warm up to you and start…_seeing_ you that way? She'd probably make Jax jump the same hurdles – if she was interested in him, which she's not," he added quickly.

"And, hey!" He clapped his hands together, pointing at Jason with both hands. "I know. They're probably meeting for dinner to talk about you. She's probably trying to help you in her own way."

Jason's scowl grew downright menacing. "What the hell does Jax have to do with this?"

And to that, Spinelli had no answer.

"I…I…maybe…he could…"

Eyes hard, Jason forced himself to sit back down again. "Yeah, I thought so."

Fuck.

Spinelli closed his eyes and resisted the urge to bang his head against the wall.

_Fuck_.

He'd gone and done – by accident – the one thing he vowed not to do. He had let something slip and he had upset Stone Cold. And the worst part was that after laying down all the facts, Spinelli was now convinced that the Dragon _was_ just having dinner with Jax to somehow help Stone Cold. How, he had no clue, but he was willing to bet that in her mind, she thought she really would be helping Jason by letting the affectionately nicknamed Candy Boy wine and dine her.

But he couldn't put that last piece of it together, and he couldn't convince Stone Cold that it was nothing.

"She's not like that," he found himself saying. "We're both wrong if we think she's like that."

Jason stared at him. "Just go, Spinelli. Finish your work."

Feeling like a world-class heel, Spinelli slowly turned around and slipped out of the interrogation room. God damn it, he couldn't do anything right these days.

He'd just have to make up for his goof by getting Stone Cold out of prison as quickly as he could so that his mentor and the Dragon could work all this out and go back to being the way they were.


	46. Chapter 46

Previously – Spinelli finds the dirt on Scott; Elizabeth meets with the Quartermaines and Webbers to strike a deal; Spinelli accidentally lets word of Elizabeth's 'date' slip.

**Note – **Back after a long time. My top priority was the Solo Ensemble 2,000 Member Fic Treasury that I'm working on, which is now about 78 members overdue. :-P But I was getting bogged down in Depressionville working on the continuation to my _After the Honeymoon_ story, so I thought I'd update some Hack to break it up a bit.

Also, sorry if language offends peeps, but the first paragraph chunk is supposed to be ironic. ;-) LOL. And there's an Arrested Development allusion hidden in this chapter! Yay!

Hack | 46

Someone needed to buy Spinelli a fucking thesaurus.

This was the brilliant conclusion Jason Morgan arrived at as he watched his stupid little charge pull the door of the interrogation room closed behind him. Because if Spinelli had a fucking thesaurus, he wouldn't fucking use words as fucking stupid as 'date' to describe Elizabeth's fucking plans for the evening.

Yeah, the kid definitely needed a thesaurus in order to bring new words into his vocabulary.

Because if Spinelli had access to a thesaurus, he could have used other, nicer words like…dinner. Plans. Meeting. Get together.

Anything but fucking _date_.

Jason rolled his eyes and got up from his seat, unable to sit still any longer. Maybe it was just that he hated associating the word 'date' with Elizabeth who, after all, had never missed an opportunity to inform him that she would never, ever date him. (It would reflect poorly on her, he was told.) The idea of her getting ready and dressing nicely (well, she _always_ dressed nicely, certainly nicer than he did) and doing her hair and going out to a nice restaurant and…doing _date_ stuff just grated on his nerves because he couldn't picture her doing it. (And he certainly knew that she wasn't doing that with Jax – hence Spinelli needing a thesaurus to find a more appropriate word.)

Or maybe it was just the fact that he'd been cooped in prison for what felt like forever, and she was off visiting everyone but him. Because if she had taken the time to visit Jax, a man she barely spoke to a couple times a year, then she had probably already made a trip over to Wyndemere to visit her Prince in shining armor, and she might have even talked to the Quartermaines if she was desperate (or stupid) enough. He had no idea what it was that she hoped to accomplish by talking to such people, but Jax could not have been the first guy on her list.

Meanwhile, it seemed like he was the last.

He rolled his neck, trying to ease the tension there, and resumed pacing around the interrogation room, considerably bigger than his cell, until his guard realized that he was alone and needed to be brought back in.

It shouldn't have bothered him so much that she hadn't come to see him. And really, it didn't bother him in the sense that he didn't need some woman to hover over him and coddle him and things of that nature. Sure, he had liked it back when he'd injured his leg, but sometimes he wished that Elizabeth would just take some time to herself, get some rest, and just let him breathe a little.

It was just that he had gotten so used to having her around these past few months. Even when she wasn't _around_ physically, he always knew where she was and how to get a hold of her if he needed or wanted to. He couldn't quite do that when he was stuck in a jail cell and she was traipsing around Port Charles making social calls.

Really, though, Elizabeth didn't owe him anything. He liked to think that they had both grown together and come to care for each other in such a way that she _would_ come to visit him for as long as she could until the cops booted her out, but in the end, the cold fact remained that he hadn't made her any promises (that she was willing to hear) and she hadn't made him any.

And maybe this was the sign that he'd been hoping for earlier when he'd noticed his Italian glass holding back her hair – but a different kind of sign. A warning sign, something to let him know to watch where he stepped because the ground was shaky and could give at any moment.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Having dressed down her glam look with a cropped waist denim jacket after meeting with the Quartermaines and Webbers, Elizabeth walked briskly into the PCPD. She didn't dignify any of the officers with even a first glance; to do so would have been to invite dirty looks and snide remarks and really, after her meeting with the five horsepeople of the Apocalypse, she didn't much have the stomach for it.

But apparently her battles for the day weren't over, because as soon as she headed into the main room, she saw Spinelli coming out of the interrogation room entirely oblivious to the dark glares Taggert and DA Baldwin sent his way. Elizabeth groaned inwardly and quickened her step, already gearing up for another fight. It was good that the nerd came to visit Jason but he definitely didn't need to linger and stupidly invite Taggert and Scott's derision.

They had already set in on him by the time she walked over. This was precisely the reason why Elizabeth had let the entire town think that she did nothing but sit around all day on Sonny's fat trust fund: no one knew that she was the technological mind behind the Corinthos-Morgan team and no one could hassle her for it. Spinelli, however, made it a point to carry Princess Peach with him everywhere, and he was often known to brag about the work he was doing for Mister Corinthos Sir and Stone Cold, thus making him a target for jerks like Scott and Taggert, who thought he was the whiz kid that helped Jason and Sonny stay untouchable.

Stupid nerd.

As it was, Spinelli had let something that Scott said get to him and now tipped his chin defiantly up in the air. "You are mistaken, Dastardly D.A. of Darkness and Lousy Lieutenant, if you think that you're going to pin this most heinous crime on Stone Cold. The charges won't stick, and Stone Cold and the Dragon shall soon be out frolicking in the meadows under the blessing of Mister Corinthos Sir, and-"

Taggert and Scott exchanged confused looks, as Spinelli grew more and more excited and more and more loud. "What the hell is he talking about?"

"I think he said something about Anger Boy frolicking."

Scott frowned. "Morgan doesn't frolic."

"He _could_ frolic!" Spinelli yelled, stomping his foot in exasperation. "He could, and-"

"Pipe down, Geek Squad," the D.A. barked, jabbing a finger in the boy's face. "I've had just about enough of you. Why is it that every time I turn around, you're here, holding your boss's hand and yelling about frolicking? Huh?"

Spinelli wisely chose to remain silent.

Scott drew closer, using his size, his official position, and his overpowering scent of Old Spice to his advantage. "I know that you're nowhere near as harmless as some people think. You're in this pretty deep, aren't you, kid?"

Defying all logical conclusions about him, Spinelli still remained silent.

"I see you, carrying that computer of yours around all the time," Scott sneered, gesturing to Spinelli's empty side where Princess Peach's case usually was. "You're trying to cook up something for your boss. Well, let me tell you something, kid, you're a part of this investigation, too."

The boy's eyes widened. "…What do you mean?"

"I've got a good mind to take possession of that circuit board of yours," Scott announced, his eyes glittering when a look of sheer terror passed over Spinelli's features. "What do you think, Taggert?"

"I bet he's got lots of information stored on there for Anger Boy and Mister Corinthos," the lieutenant mused. "It sure could help us put them both behind bars."

"Where's the computer, Spinelli?" Scott asked, his voice low and cool. "I think you need to hand it over."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes, recognizing Scott's empty posturing for what it was. Spinelli, however, had very little experience with the D.A. first hand and didn't have the good sense to scoff and walk away.

"Come off it, Baldwin," she huffed, marching forward and insinuating herself directly between the D.A. and a terrified Spinelli. Throwing him an arch look, Elizabeth crossed her arms over her chest and tossed her hair over her shoulder – typical defensive posture.

"Nerd doesn't have to answer a single question of yours without his lawyer present."

Scott and Taggert both glared at her, looking almost comically similar. "That computer most likely contains sensitive information that is immediately pertinent to this case. Where's the computer, kid?"

"I-"

Elizabeth jabbed him in the stomach with her elbow. "He doesn't have it with him."

Frick and Frack both gave her the same exasperated look. "Well? Where is it?"

She pretended to think, waving her hand absently in the air. "Oh, I don't know, some kind of place – It's a small town. Quaint, the kind you see in pictures. Arbordale, or something like that. Brookfeather, Raintree. It's hot, it's very hot there. I've never been – GET A WARRANT!"

"Don't think I won't!" Scott fired back. "You think you're being funny about this – I got news for you, sweetheart, this is the end of the line. This is where the buck stops. There's a fat lady over there, and she's already sung, gone home, and she's eating cottage cheese out of the container and washing it down with root beer!"

Elizabeth turned her around to face Spinelli, her expression infuriatingly bland, and tipped her head at the fuming D.A. "I didn't get a word of that. You're a regular Samuel Johnson compared to this guy, nerd."

The boy brightened at that. "The original lexicographer – nice attention to detail, Dragon."

Scott wasn't done. "Get cocky about it if you want, but you're both idiots if you don't realize that this is it. We've got Morgan hard and fast. It doesn't matter if you're the whiz kid they all say you are, Geek Squad. There's nothing you or anyone else can do to get him out of this. And as soon as I get Morgan carted off to Reikers, I'm going after Corinthos. This is the end of the empire, and that means you two will be out on your butts."

Spinelli's eyes widened in terror once more; being thrown out on his butt was, after all, his worst fear. Elizabeth, however, looked almost amused.

"Unless you wise up and cooperate now," Scott added, transitioning awkwardly into his pitch. "Give us the information we want. And that starts with the computer. So I'm asking you one more time, Spinelli, where's the computer?"

Elizabeth's lips curved upward. "It's with your warrant."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Something was going on out there.

Jason separated the blinds with his fingers, his hands still cuffed together and beginning to hurt a little where the metal rubbed against his skin, and peeked out. And there was Elizabeth.

Well, no wonder something was going on out there!

Spinelli was practically cowering behind her, which wasn't anything new. Elizabeth often adopted the role of bulldog whenever someone hassled Spinelli – provided that there weren't too many people around to see her doing it. It reflected poorly on her, after all. Most things concerning him and Spinelli did.

Taggert and Scott Baldwin glared down at the two, and Elizabeth must have said something particularly insulting because the next thing Jason knew, the DA was yelling and Mac had to come out of his office, talk him down, and then physically drag him away.

Spinelli let out a relieved breath and exchanged a few quick words – most likely of thanks – with Elizabeth before he adjusted his beanie low over his forehead and scurried out of the PCPD before any other cop could hassle him about his connections to Jason and Sonny.

Jason held his breath – and then promptly exhaled once he realized he was holding his breath – and waited to see what Elizabeth would do. She talked to Mac and appeared to be assuring him that she was fine, that everything was fine, and then waited until the Commissioner disappeared into his office again. Then she picked up a pen, signed her name to the Visitors' Log, and turned around.

She stopped as soon as she saw him, her hand frozen in place as it reached for the knob, and Jason stared back. And then she remembered herself, and remembered that Taggert could come out of his office any minute and set in on her, and bustled into the IR.

Jason moved back as she entered, half-stumbling into one of the metal chairs, and self-consciously moved around the table so that she had some room to breathe.

"Hey."

She let out a short breath and managed a small smile. "Hey."

He licked his lips and moved all the way around the table. "Sit," he offered, gesturing to the empty chair.

Elizabeth nodded and set her purse down on the table, slowly sliding into her seat. She twined her fingers and then untwined them, waiting for Jason to take his seat across from her. He did, slowly, and took care to keep his cuffed hands under the table where she couldn't see them.

"Sorry I didn't come in earlier," she blurted out, more because she couldn't stand the silence than because she wanted to actually apologize. Although she supposed that might have been in order as well. "Things…came up."

Jason nodded quickly. "Yeah, don't worry about it."

Elizabeth tapped her nails on the table and troubled her lip. "So…you look good."

The corner of his mouth quirked up, but it was a weary smile. "Haven't been in here all that long."

A slow, heated blush crept into the apples of her cheeks. "Oh. Right."

He nodded, fiddling his thumbs underneath the table. "Yeah."

"So…" She glanced this way and that, as if she couldn't stand seeing him in his faded prison blues. "You been doing okay?"

Jason nodded slowly. "Yeah."

"Uh…Sonny's doing everything he can to get you out."

"I know. He says Alexis is the best."

"Alexis _is_ the best," Elizabeth assured him. "If anyone can get you out, she can."

He didn't want to disagree with her or alarm her about the charges stacked against him, so Jason kept quiet.

"And…I think Nerd's cooking up something, too," she offered, shrugging helplessly. "So that's good."

Jason nodded firmly. "Spinelli always comes through in a pinch."

Elizabeth blinked and allowed him a small smile. "Yeah, so he keeps saying."

"He does – he has many times before."

She nodded again. "I believe you."

They stared at each other for a long moment, not quite knowing what to say. For his part, Jason was trying to remind himself that maybe this was all some sort of sign he'd been waiting for, and that he needed to watch his step. And for her part, Elizabeth was trying to keep herself composed and calm and objective as she'd failed to do when Jason had hurt his leg, so that she didn't make the same mistake this time around and possibly jeopardize his freedom. The situation was impossible, as were the two of them.

"Jason, can I – can I get you anything? In here?"

He blinked and then shook his head. "No. No, they don't allow anyone to bring in anything."

Her shoulders slumped in defeat. "Oh. Alright, then."

"You're doing okay?"

Elizabeth brightened at his asking her a question for a change and nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Jason tipped his chin toward her fancy little dress. "You look nice."

She looked down and blushed a little. "Oh, this old thing? Just had it lying around…"

It wasn't the truth, and Jason knew it. He looked away and cleared his throat awkwardly, and Elizabeth continued on. "I, uh, saw my grandparents today. Yours, too. Well, Edward, I mean. And your parents."

Jason nodded silently.

"They…uh…they're worried about you and hope you get out quickly," she fibbed. "Even Edward."

He nodded. "Okay."

Elizabeth sighed and glanced discreetly at her watch, but Jason caught her. "Well…"

"Have somewhere to be?"

She looked up at him and blinked. "What?"

He tipped his chin toward her watch and kept his hands hidden. "You looked at your watch. Running late for something?"

Elizabeth fiddled awkwardly with her hair. "Well, not really, I was just looking at the time. I'm not running late or anything. I mean, I _am_ meeting with someone in a little while, but I'm not late or anything. I-I was actually thinking of stopping by the penthouse again before leaving. Is there anything you want me to tell Sonny for you?"

He shook his head. "No. I'll just talk to him the next time he comes here."

"He's got his hands full with the Families," she felt compelled to explain. "He's been fielding their calls all morning. That's probably why he hasn't been in yet. You sure there isn't anything you want me to tell him?"

Jason shook his head. "No, it's fine. You don't have to worry about it."

Elizabeth pushed herself to her feet and nibbled on her lip. "Jason, is…there's nothing you need me to do for you?"

He pursed his lips together and shook his head. "Nothing."

She looked down at him for a long moment and finally nodded, forcing a bright look. "Okay. I'll stop by later, okay?"

Jason finally lifted his cuffed hands and rested them lightly on the edge of the table. "Okay. Bye."

"Yeah," Elizabeth murmured, edging away from the table and holding the doorknob behind her back. "I'll, uh, I'll see you later."

And then she wrenched the door open and stepped out into the hall, shutting it behind her as quietly as human possible. Taggert was leaning against his doorjamb and Elizabeth studiously avoided his gaze and walked rigidly out of the PCPD and into the lobby, not trusting herself to stop even for a moment.

The lobby was empty, thankfully, and Elizabeth finally let out the breath she'd been holding and sank onto the wooden bench. Ritchie was outside waiting for her in the car, but if he saw her sitting there, he didn't honk his horn. And for that, Elizabeth was grateful.

She let out a tremulous breath, catching a sob before she could indulge it, and held her hand over her mouth. She sat curled up like that for several minutes, unsure if she could even get up because it just hurt so badly to see him locked up like that. He'd been so tired, so stoic, so accepting of this fate.

Alexis told her that the most probable sentence was twenty-five to life without parole. That was twenty-five years at the absolute _minimum. _Jason was a young man, barely thirty. If he got an extremely lenient judge, he wouldn't see the light of day again until he was fifty-five and she was forty-seven. Or thirty-four and a half to thirty-one, as Jason would say.

All of that time with him – lost. Just like that.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to compose herself. This wasn't doing anyone any good: breaking down in the lobby outside the PCPD. And this was exactly what she had sworn not to do since the last time she'd let her emotions get the best of her when there was work to be done. And in the end, it was only the thought that some rookie cop would amble into the lobby and spot her that prompted Elizabeth to peel herself off the bench and hurry into the safety of the chauffeured car outside, ready to take her to her dinner with Jasper Jacks.

There was no time to spend worrying, after all. Time she spent worrying about Jason was time that she could be spending helping Jason, and when she thought of it like that, it wasn't much of a contest at all. And if the evening with Jacks went well, she'd have every single piece of her puzzle just about lined up and perfectly in place.

Now it was just a matter of keeping her eyes on the prize.


	47. Chapter 47

_Previously – Jason resolves to distance himself emotionally from Elizabeth; Elizabeth rescues Spinelli when Taggert and Scott hassle him; Elizabeth and Jason have a strained conversation in the interrogation room; Elizabeth breaks down in the lobby at the thought of Jason being put away for twenty-five to life._

**Note – **Here we go some more. Also, in case it hasn't already been made obvious, Jax and Brenda were never romantically involved, thus Jax and Sonny were never at odds.

Hack | 47At the Port Charles Grille…

Elizabeth smiled across the table at Jasper Jacks as he handed their menus back to the server and tented his fingers over the white tablecloth. "Thanks again for meeting me, Jax. I really appreciate it."

His smile was broad but just a touch hesitant. "It was my pleasure, Elizabeth. But I have to admit, I was a little surprised when my secretary gave me your message."

She crossed her legs and studiously ignored the Quartermaines, who had just walked into the dining room and were aiming knowing looks at her and her companion. "Sorry about doing this on such short notice. That was kind of rude of me."

Jax shook his head and fiddled with his cuffs. "Not at all. I'm just happy I had the evening free."

Elizabeth licked her lips and leaned a little closer. No sense in beating around the bush, especially since they both knew there was a reason she'd asked him out tonight. "Jax, I know you're wondering why I wanted to have dinner with you since we only ever speak a couple times a year, so I'll just come out with it."

He nodded and leaned closer as well, listening intently. She'd thrown him for a real loop by asking him out, and he was eager to know why.

"You're an important man in Port Charles," Elizabeth started out. "I've known you for years, and you've always been a good friend to Sonny, and to Brenda before. You've been there for all of us whenever we needed you, no questions asked, and I hope that we've returned the favor whenever you hoped we would."

Jax nodded slowly. "Yes, as a matter of fact. I consider myself fortunate to have allies like Sonny and Jason in this town. And to have known a woman like Brenda."

She accepted the remark with a solemn nod. "It took me a while to convince myself to ask you out tonight, but I've decided that I couldn't put it off any longer. And that I just _had_ to see you."

He blinked several times and awkwardly fiddled with his glass of water. "Er, Elizabeth, I'm not sure what-"

"I'll explain everything," she promised. "We have the whole evening to talk, and I promise I'll make it all worth your while."

His eyes widened, and the affable Australian actually looked nervous. "Look, Elizabeth, I appreciate the fact that you, er, took it upon yourself to have us spend some time together, and I think you're a lovely girl, but…I'm in a committed relationship. V and I-"

Her jaw dropped and before she could stop herself – it was really quite rude, after all – Elizabeth burst out laughing. "What? Oh, Jax, no – no, no, no. I didn't ask you out to – _ask you out_. God, no. Oh, man."

She was blushing now and hid her face in her hands as she laughed. "Oh, I'm so sorry that I gave you that impression – and I don't blame you. Wow, that's embarrassing."

He was gaping at her, but Jax was nothing if not easygoing, so he laughed along as well. "Well, at least we're on the same page now. So tell me, what did you ask me out tonight for?"

"I need a favor," she blurted out, thinking that she should have started with that line all along to avoid this humiliating confusion. "Sonny and I need a favor, and we'll owe you in return. You and Sonny can hammer out the details later, but there's something that we need you to do immediately."

Jax arched a brow, removing his hands from the table as their server came by with their entrees. "All right, that sounds more like it."

She waited until the waiter had gone before leaning back in. "There's one little thing I need you to do with Nikolas Cassidine. It won't take too much of your time, hopefully, and it won't damage your standing in town or anything like that, and I'll tell you exactly what to do. And it would mean so much to us, Jax, it really would. So what do you say?"

~*~*~*~*~*~

Back at Harborview later that night…

"How was your date, Toothpick?"

Elizabeth resisted the urge to elbow Max in the stomach as he held the door to Penthouse VI open for her. "Not a date."

"I'm just teasing," he assured her, following her in. "Still, how'd it go? Did you get what you wanted?"

She smiled wearily and nodded. "Yeah. Jax was wonderful. Once he was sure that I wasn't hitting on him or trying to pick him up-"

Max snorted.

"Laugh if you want," Elizabeth replied, "but in retrospect, it really did sound like that. Anyway, once I told him what I needed him to do, he said he was happy to do it. And the favor I promised him on Sonny's behalf was just icing on the cake."

"Good man, that Jax," the guard asserted. "I always knew he was on the level."

She laughed and flopped down on the couch, resting her head on the back and closing her eyes. It had been a very long couple of days and she hadn't gotten much sleep. Plus, that huge dinner Jax insisted on was now making her even drowsier. Not good, considering she was due at the warehouse to finish the last phase of her plan, which would require serious buckling-down and serious caffeine.

"So you been holding down the fort while I was gone?" She cracked one eye open and eyed her friend. "Anything interesting going on?"

Max pursed his lips and took a seat on the coffee table right in front of her so that their knees bumped. "Well, I don't know harmless this is, but…"

That got her attention. "What?"

"Spaghetti's been working on his own little plan to get Jason out of jail," Max confessed. "I've been keeping an eye on him, and so has Sonny, but you know how busy he is right now. I thought for sure he was going to break something after his calls with the Family heads today."

"What's the nerd been doing, Max?"

"He wants to blackmail Scott Baldwin," he explained simply, wincing when Elizabeth threw her head back with a groan. "He's been spending the past few days searching out all the skeletons in Scott's closet, and he plans to blackmail him into dropping the charges against Jason."

"Stupid nerd," Elizabeth muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose in one of the many weary gestures she'd unconsciously picked up from Jason. "He's going to ruin everything. What's he thinking?!"

"He's thinking that he can get Jason out," Max replied. "That's all that matters to him."

"He's missing the big picture," she groaned. "Typical nerd. What will digging up the dirt on Scott do? Even if it forces his hand and he drops the charges, it's going to hurt us in the long run. He'll hate us even more for that and he'll become obsessed with taking Sonny and Jason down."

"But we'll already have the dirt on him," the guard pointed out. "That would buy us a little time, right?"

"Only until Scott decides that he needs to find someone else to do the dirty work for him," Elizabeth snorted. "Like the mayor, or any of his other government contacts. Or, until Scott decides that he doesn't care if his dirty laundry is aired so long as it means that Sonny and Jason go down. This will only make things worse for us all."

Her friend tipped his head to the side. "Tell me what I can do."

She considered it for a minute. "I hate to say it, but…"

"Just tell me, Toothpick. I'll make sure it's handled."

"I need you to sabotage him," Elizabeth replied simply. "We have to do something to keep him from jumping the gun and convincing Sonny to do the same. We can't let him actually do anything to antagonize Scott or the Mayor. What I need you to do is spill orange soda on Princess Peach and make it look like an accident. Just buy me some time, Max. I promise I'll have everything done real soon."

~*~*~*~*~*~

_Penthouse IV, the next morning…_

Everything was gone.

Spinelli buried his head in his hands and resisted the urge to kick something, scream, cry, or any unseemly combination of the three. God _damn _it. He'd stepped away from his computer for one second to use the bathroom and the Stocky Sentinel had bumped into it and spilled orange soda all over the keyboard.

Max had apologized profusely, but the damage was done. Princess Peach was dead, and would remain so until he could rebuild her innards. All the information he had painstakingly gathered on Scott Baldwin was gone. He should have saved it on a disk or sent it to his secure email address at the very least – at least then he would have had a way to access it!

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Really, this was one of very few situations where it should be perfectly all right for a man to burst into tears and eat his way through an entire carton of Ben & Jerry's.

Unfortunately, Spinelli didn't have time to wallow. Stone Cold was counting on him, and after all, would Stone Cold wallow? No. Stone Cold would just get another computer and continue his hackzor awesomeness.

That is, if Stone Cold could hack.

He'd have to teach him how one day.

With a sigh, he pushed himself up from his seat at Sonny's dining table and reluctantly walked Princess Peach over to the fireplace. He set her down on the bricks to rest, crossed himself, and then trudged out across the hall to his own penthouse to retrieve Bowser the Backup.

He found Bowser under the bed in his protective case and quickly made sure he was in working order. The operating system was current, thank God, and all of his software was installed and running, and all of the wires and plug-ins were there. He was an older model with a slower processor that would crimp the hacking that was to ensue, but Bowser was better than nothing. He was no Princess Peach, of course, but at least he was functional.

Spinelli slung the protective case over his shoulder and trotted down the stairs. His new favorite place to hack was at Sonny's dining table. He supposed that he could do it on the couch here in Penthouse II, but it didn't feel right to sit around in the living room while Stone Cold was locked up. Mister Corinthos Sir was in his penthouse, always on the phone or drinking or trying to get some sleep, and Spinelli found that he appreciated the background noise. Not to mention the fact that someone was just _there_, and he wasn't sitting all alone.

He grabbed the doorknob and pulled the door open a crack when he heard Max and Milo talking in the hallway in suspiciously hushed voices.

"So all the information on Scott's really gone?"

He could see Max nod through the crack in the door. "Yup. I got everything."

"By spilling orange soda over the keyboard?" Milo was wrinkling his nose. "Isn't that, I don't know, kind of newb-ish? Couldn't you have gone in and deleted the files, erased the cookies, that sort of thing?"

Max let out a snort. "Yeah, Elizabeth and Spinelli are the hackers, not me. Besides, Toothpick was the one that said to do it by way of orange soda spillage. So that's exactly what I did."

Spinelli's jaw dropped as Milo nodded solemnly. "Well, I guess it's as good a way as any. So what's Spaghetti doing about it?"

"I think he's going to get his backup computer and start hacking and collecting more dirt as soon as possible. Still, this is one big setback and by the time he's done, Elizabeth will already have fixed everything."

"Yeah, there's no way he'll beat her," Milo agreed.

That was quite enough of that.

Spinelli flung the door open and stormed into the hallway, Bowser the Backup clutched firmly to his side. He blew right past the M&M Sentinels, as he collectively referred to them, without giving them a backward glance. If he did, Spinelli knew he'd lose it right then and there and call them both out on their treachery.

So the Dragon sought to sabotage his work, did she?

To what end? She wanted Stone Cold out of prison as badly as he did! But she still sought to ruin him, despite the fact that he was working around the clock to free his beloved mentor while she ran around town socializing and having drinks with that Candy Boy Jasper Jacks.

No, the Dragon was after total victory. She wanted all the credit, all the glory, for setting Stone Cold free. It was almost as if his freedom were secondary to her bragging rights! It must have killed her that he was on his way to freeing Stone Cold – she couldn't let him do that. So she sabotaged him so that she could buy herself some time to whip up her own plan.

He slammed Bowser down onto Sonny's dining table with a little more force than was probably prudent, but Spinelli was thinking of other things. He would forsake Princess Peach for Bowser – not out of choice, but necessity – and he would restore everything that was lost.

And _he_ would be the one to get Stone Cold out, Dragon be damned.

~*~*~*~*~*~

_Penthouse IV, that afternoon…_

Cold green eyes followed Elizabeth as she stepped into Sonny's penthouse, exhausted from a long night of coding. Her program was giving her major problems, and even though she successfully found the semi-colon she lost last time, another one was missing this time around. Damn semi-colons; what was their deal?

"Any messages?" she yawned, trying to rub the sleep from her eyes. She'd taken a little cat nap in her war room, and was now hoping that a long hot shower, immediately followed by a quick cold shower, would suffice to fully wake her. "Anything new?"

Spinelli glared at her, not trusting himself to speak, and continued to click away on his keyboard.

Elizabeth set down her purse and stripped off the green cardigan she wore over her pajamas. "Where's Sonny? He around?"

She didn't receive an answer.

Elizabeth yawned again, sorely tempted to flop down on the couch and not move for a muscle for the rest of the day, but sadly, that wasn't an option. She needed something to eat. She'd run out of food at the bunker and had been too focused on her coding to run out to Kelly's for more. She had a feeling that if she called Georgie up, the girl would whip something wonderful together and send someone out with it, but she didn't want to bother her.

Besides, Sonny almost always had something in the fridge that she could either put together herself or at the very least reheat. He was out meeting with Tagliati and a couple of the other associates that lived nearby, otherwise he would have set her up with a week's worth of food at her little war room.

She ducked into the kitchen, figuring that the stupid nerd was too involved in his crap blackmailing to pay attention to her. In about ten minutes she managed to fix up an entire three-course meal, just what she needed, and returned to the dining table with a little extra to share if Spinelli was hungry, too. Poor nerd was probably working double-time since she had Max douse Princess Peach with orange soda. She felt badly about that, but there really didn't seem to be any other way. Nerd was a fast worker – a little too fast for her own good – and she had to stall him a little until she was ready.

She mixed up her salad with a fork, spreading the feta cheese crumbles around. Spinelli was still typing away, periodically glancing at his notebook and saving things to his hard drive, apparently being determined not to make the same mistake twice.

"So…how's your thing going?"

Oh, that was big fat _it_.

He slammed Bowser's lid down – again, with a little more force than was prudent – and glared ferociously at her. "How's it going? I think you know exactly how it's going."

Elizabeth gulped. "Er, what?"

Spinelli's eyes narrowed lethally, an expression he'd most likely learned from his enforcer-roommate. "I know you were the one to order the Stocky Sentinel to destroy Princess Peach."

Her eyes widened. "I-I don't know what you-"

"I heard them talking about it," he interrupted angrily. She'd hardly ever seen the nerd truly angry before, and Spinelli was pulling out all the stops. "And you know what? I don't even want to hear any of your excuses – I don't want to hear your explanations for why you did it. I just don't care. Because it's obvious enough already that you're only interested in coming out on top. It doesn't matter to you that Stone Cold could be locked up for twenty-five years minimum without a chance of parole-"

Elizabeth's brows furrowed. "Hold on a second-"

"All you care about is the glory," Spinelli sneered. "God forbid that anyone come out on top but the Dragon. Ever since I came here, it's been all about how you're the _girl_ and how everyone here loves you and coddles you and how you have full run of the place. That's crap! You're spoiled and entitled, and you've never had to work for a single damn thing in your life – other than your recovery."

As angry as he was, he at least retained some sympathy for her accident and her road back from that. And that was mostly because of Stone Cold, and how he had recovered in much the same manner.

"Mister Corinthos Sir hands you everything on a Hello Kitty platter, as does every other man around here," Spinelli fumed, throwing his hands wildly into the air. "But the Jackal sees through your smoke and mirrors. I can't believe that for a while, I was actually starting to like you – I actually thought you were okay. A little not normal, but then again, Stone Cold's a little not normal, too. But you're just…awful."

He shook his head, disgusted. "When you don't get what you want, you set out to ruin whoever you think is standing in your way. First that was Stone Cold, but then he was stupid enough to sleep with you so you had to seek someone else to torture. Ever since I got here, you've done _nothing_ but ride my hump every step of the way and try to force me out of this pristine little bubble you've built for yourself here.

"Well, guess what? If I have to go, I'll go. But the Jackal will be damned if he goes without a fight." He flipped the switch with his thumb to free the lid and righted Bowser. "You may think that you've messed up my attempt to free Stone Cold, but the Jackal is nothing if not persistent and persevering. I _will_ fix all the damage you did, and I _will_ be the one to get Stone Cold out while you go out and…do whatever it is that you've been doing! And you can choke on it, Elizabeth."

He spared her one last dark look and then turned back to his computer. Elizabeth blinked at having been so cleanly dismissed, and just sat there and gaped at him for a moment. But Spinelli refused to dignify her with a second glance and so after a few minutes, she quietly picked up her plates, balanced them together, and headed toward the stairs.

He'd called her Elizabeth. He never called her Elizabeth – except when he was angry, apparently. And the way he'd said it, so full of vehemence and disgust…She liked it so much better when he called her Dragon.

She stopped at the landing and looked down at Spinelli, who was still red-faced and fuming from their fight. It was obvious that the nerd needed this badly, and even though she was hurt from his lashing out and angry with him for what he'd said, Elizabeth was also just a little sad that she hadn't noticed this sooner.

Jason's absence was really getting to the kid. And if she thought about it, it wasn't so strange at all. For the past four years, Jason had been a constant in Spinelli's life. And hell, he was probably the only constant in the kid's life, and they weren't even biologically related. She knew Jason well, and she knew his capacity to love. He loved Spinelli, even though Elizabeth doubted that he'd ever said it aloud. It was clear in his actions and in the way he treated the scraggly little nerd.

And to be loved by Jason meant the world to Spinelli. She imagined that to be loved by a man like Jason would mean the world to anyone. With him gone, Spinelli probably felt more lost and alone than ever, despite the fact that she was here and Sonny was here and all the guards were here. Nerd's first loyalty was to Jason, and Elizabeth knew firsthand that the kid was only about him. There were no underlying motives there, no hidden agendas. Spinelli was completely, selflessly devoted to his best friend's best interest and right now, he didn't think that she felt the same way.

With a sigh, she turned and climbed the rest of the steps upstairs. Right now, she didn't have the time to worry about their spat, as surprisingly distressing as it was. She would take care of Jason first, and then worry about smoothing things over with Spinelli.

But what really got her was just how much it suddenly mattered to her what that stupid little nerd thought about her.


	48. Chapter 48

Previously – Elizabeth asks Jax to work with Nikolas; when Max tells her of Spinelli's plans, Elizabeth asks him to spill orange soda on Princess Peach; Spinelli learns of Elizabeth's treachery and calls her on it.

**Note – **Hooray! The updates are flowing! Too bad the SEMMFF fics aren't. Oh, the well.

Hack | 48

Spinelli gaped at his computer screen, where he had pulled up a live local news feed so he could listen while he worked. "Uh…Mister Corinthos Sir?"

Sonny gulped down two over-the-counter painkillers with his morning orange juice and looked over his shoulder. "What is it, Spinelli?"

"Turn on the television."

The foreboding in the kid's voice had Sonny immediately reaching for the remote. "What channel?"

"Local news," Spinelli replied, increasing volume on his computer as it synced with the television. "Looks like the Dastardly D.A. of Darkness is holding a press conference."

Sonny let out a sigh and increased the volume as Spinelli watched along on his computer. "All right, let's see what he's got to say."

Scott had spared no amount of fanfare in setting up his little press junket. He appeared on Sonny's enormous plasma screen in a sharp black suit and understated, elegant tie, a far cry from his often garish power-look. He stood behind a podium covered in microphones and was basking in the rapid flashes that went off around him, and enjoying every minute of it.

"_For too long, gangsters like Michael "Sonny" Corinthos and Jason Morgan have eluded the long arm of the law,"_ he boomed. _"They felt no compunction in running drugs through our district, owning and operating illegal casinos and strip clubs without the proper licenses, evading any and all taxes on the vast sums of money they've accumulated, and bringing violence and bloodshed to our doorstep."_

"And a couple thousand jobs to Port Charles," Spinelli grumbled. "Not to mention, cleaning up all the baddies that the bumbling PCPD Law-Abiding Ones couldn't pick out of a line-up of one."

Sonny snorted and increased the volume again.

"But no more! The Port Charles Police Department, our Mayor Garrett Floyd, and the office of the District Attorney are all committed to bringing these criminals to justice before they ruin our town. I, Scott Baldwin, am committed to putting trained killers like Jason Morgan behind bars where they belong and cleaning up Port Charles once and for all!"

Sonny growled and jabbed at the remote. The television flipped off, and the remote was flung onto the couch. "Come on."

"Where are we going?"

Sonny picked up his suit jacket from the back of his favorite armchair and shrugged into it as Spinelli quickly picked up Bowser and slipped him into a carrying case that also contained a bulging file. "The PCPD. I'm not leaving Jason alone after this performance."

"Good thinking, Mister Corinthos Sir," Spinelli agreed, quickly following the mobster out. "Lead the way, and the Jackal shall loyally follow."

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Stop tightening my tie!"

Alexis smacked Scott's hands away and resumed her ministration. "Hold still! I can't talk to you until I've tightened your tie!"

"That thing costs more than my pants! You're ruining it!"

Satisfied, she withdrew her hand as the District Attorney yanked his tie loose and glared at her. "That stunt you pulled was very unprofessional, Baldwin. And just a little cocky."

He fumed as he redid his double Windsor knot. "And that stunt _you_ just pulled was very unprofessional and just a little cocky. Never touch a man's tie."

"No promises," she replied. "You're jumping the gun, Scott. You're going to look _so_ foolish when I yank this case right out from under you. The only way the people of Port Charles will trust you to clean this town up after I let Jason Morgan walk out of here free and clear is if you go out and buy a broom and dustpan. Maybe a gray unitard."

He brushed past her and headed toward his office, growling when Spinelli and Sonny came rushing into the main offices. "Save your tough talk, Alexis. You don't scare anyone in this office. You're just the mouthpiece, spitting out whatever _that_ illiterate tells you."

Sonny ignored Scott and took Alexis's arm, holding her back as she tried to go after him. "He's not worth it."

"I'm not going to do anything to him – physically," Alexis ground out, yanking her arm from his hold. "Be practical, Baldwin. You've postured before and you got kicked out of your office when it backfired on you."

"But I was voted back in," he reminded her, stalking right back over. If there was one thing the DA couldn't resist, it was a good fight. "The people of Port Charles wanted me back because they _trust_ me to get rid of yahoo's like Corinthos and Morgan. And I'm going to do it. We've got this one in the bag, and there's nothing you or Robin and the Seven Hoods over there can do about it. We've got the footage on disk and on file in the evidence room. In fact, I've got it right here."

He patted his breast pocket and indulged a perfectly smug look. "I'll introduce it as evidence when this case goes to trial-"

"If this case goes to trial, which it won't," Alexis interrupted archly.

"-And the jury and the media will all get a first-hand look at that trained killer doing what he does best." Scott smirked and smoothed his tie. "And no judge in his right mind would pass down anything less than twenty-five. It must kill you to know that there's nothing you can do about it."

"I've gone up against you before, Scott," Alexis practically yawned. And then, because she had yawned, she tapped each foot three times on the floor. "And I've cleaned your clock and made you look very, very foolish in front of some very, very important people. So take my advice on this one. Drop the charges."

He laughed right in her face, clearly enjoying this immensely. "You'll forgive me if I don't, because that's a crock. I have this one _done_ – it's as good as over. There's no way your boy is getting out of this one."

Sonny let out a sigh and withdrew once he noticed Spinelli signing them into the Visitors' Log. Alexis was more than capable of handling Scott on her own – even though he barely trusted her not to pull any punches – and he wanted to stick close to Spinelli, just in case. The kid was taking Jason's incarceration pretty hard, and missed very few opportunities to come visit his mentor in the Interrogation Room.

Spinelli opened the door and barged right on in, leaving Sonny to follow. Jason was seated at the table, leaning back in his seat, and was watching replayed footage of the press conference on the little wall-mounted television.

"Greetings, Stone Cold. I, uh, take it you've seen the Dastardly DA's Press Junket O' Perniciousness?"

Somehow, Jason understood that. "Yeah. Looks like it just happened."

"About ten minutes ago," the boy confirmed, offering Sonny a seat before he slid into his own. "Don't let it get to you. The Dastardly DA grows bombastic, and that never bodes well for the villains of our stories."

"He says he's got some pretty damning evidence," Jason replied, lifting both hands in order to scratch his chin. "Something about-"

"It's footage of you allegedly dragging Alcazar's dead body across the floor," Sonny informed him. "You can't see your face, but it's pretty hard to argue otherwise…especially since he says 'Morgan' just before he falls into frame."

"Our Lady Litigator is out there right now, arguing the DA of Darkness into submission," Spinelli offered, trying to be helpful. "She must have something up her sleeve, because she appears very confident. And even if she's bluffing, it doesn't matter."

Sonny arched a brow at him. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah," Spinelli grinned, patting his carrying case. "Because the Jackal has come prepared for action. I present to you…Exhibit A. We won't need an Exhibit B."

Sonny and Jason stared down at the fat folder he slammed onto the table. "What the hell is all that?"

"This," Spinelli began, eyeing the curious guard that stood just outside the closed door, "is a complete file on all of the skeletons in our DA's closet. Every single last thing that we can use against him. An oil scam in there, several charges of racketeering, theft, fraud, embezzlement, cronyism, political favors, a dead hooker, and even an illegitimate son in there somewhere."

"Let me see that," Sonny grumbled, snatching the file away and laying it open on the table. Across from him, Jason leaned forward in his seat to get a better look. "Jesus, Spinelli, how'd you find all this stuff?"

"It was difficult," the boy admitted, "particularly with the Dragon-induced setbacks, but the Jackal persevered, as is his way."

Jason frowned. "Dragon-induced setbacks?"

Sonny shot him a relieved look. "Good, I was just about to ask what the hell that meant, too."

"The Jackal has it on excellent authority that the Dragon actively worked to undermine his efforts in collecting the dirt on DA Baldwin," Spinelli replied primly. The Dragon was in for it now. There was no sense in protecting her; she brought it all on herself and he was sick of it all. If she wanted to play that way, that was how it was going to be. No more favors.

Naturally, Sonny wasn't easily accepting of this new tidbit of information. "What authority?"

"The M&M Sentinels," he answered. "Max and Milo. I heard them talking in the hall – the Dragon ordered the Stocky Sentinel to spill orange soda on Princess Peach, and he was telling his brother about it post-operation."

"That doesn't sound like her," Sonny frowned.

Jason's eyes glittered with amusement. "That sounds _exactly _like her, and you know it."

His best friend let out a little laugh. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

Spinelli frowned at them both. Stone Cold and Mister Corinthos Sir weren't nearly as upset as he would have liked. "Yes, as charming as her subversive antics may be, she destroyed Princess Peach. And she tried to halt my efforts to free Stone Cold."

Jason carefully hid a smile. If Elizabeth was going through all the trouble of sabotaging Spinelli, she must have already had something in place. "I'm sure she'll fix your computer for you, Spinelli."

The boy's jaw dropped. "That's so not the point! She thought it was no big deal to destroy all my work, just because she…she…she's awful!"

Sonny and Jason both stared at him, neither one offering an argument.

Spinelli glowered at them both and hunkered down in his seat. "Just read the stupid file."

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Scott and the Mayor have been in his office for a long time," Sonny mused, peeking out through the blinds in the interrogation room.

Spinelli twisted in his seat while Jason continued to read up on Scott's illegitimate son living somewhere in Texas. "What do you think they're doing in there?"

"They're looking at something on his computer, I think," the mobster replied. "Probably the footage that Scott was talking about. Mayor Floyd must not have seen it until now."

"Have you?"

Sonny nodded absently. "Elizabeth showed it to me."

Jason and Spinelli were just about to inquire as to how the hell she got her hands on that footage when there was a clatter outside and Alexis burst in, nearly bashing the heavy door into Sonny's face.

"Turn on the television," she ordered, gesturing to the wall-mounted television. "Local news. Something big's going on."

Spinelli frowned as the attorney whirled around and ran back over to the larger television in the PCPD main office area, then got up and punched the power button. "Alright, let's see what Our Lady Litigator is talking about… What the heck?"

Sonny and Jason gaped at the screen. Despite the fuzziness, they could still clearly see Steve Hardy, Audrey Webber, and Edward, Alan, and Monica Quartermaine gathered together behind a large podium. Edward, Steve, and Alan stood in the center, framed neatly by the women, and took turns speaking into the microphones all clustered together at the bottom of the frame.

"…_earlier today. We thank all of you for the letters of support we've received in this trying time," _Edward was saying as Steve nodded solemnly. _"Jason Morgan is a part of the Quartermaine family – a part of __our__ family – and we will not stand for this egregious injustice committed against him by the District Attorney's office."_

Jason, Sonny, and Spinelli gaped at the television screen. "Who _are _those people?"

The prodigal son in question shrugged and rubbed his chin. That was exactly what he had been wondering.

"_This incident is merely one in a long line of acts of aggression from the DA's office," _Edward continued. _"Their aggression is established and has precedence. Five years ago, my grandson was dragged into the Port Charles Police Department on suspicion of kidnapping Karen Wexler, the District Attorney's daughter. It was later discovered that Miss Wexler eloped with her fiancé, and that my grandson was entirely innocent of any possible wrong-doing."_

Spinelli turned around and looked at Sonny. "You guys kidnapped her and then paid them off, didn't you?"

Sonny nodded. "Oh, yeah."

"_We have remained silent about this and many other injustices committed by the District Attorney's office," _Steve Webber picked up. The speech looked perfectly rehearsed, right down to the choreography. _"The Quartermaines never filed charges against the Port Charles Police Department for harassing their youngest grandson."_

"Legitimate," Spinelli, Sonny, and even Jason added under their breath in perfect unison.

"_But we cannot allow this harassment to continue," _Elizabeth's grandfather asserted, even pounding a fist on the podium for emphasis. It seemed that a flair for drama ran in the family. _"The Quartermaine family and the Webber family stand united this evening: as the young man's family, we cannot allow District Attorney Scott Baldwin to continue harassing Jason Morgan and fabricating false charges against him."_

Sonny smirked and glanced at Jason. "What do you think?"

His best friend shrugged. "Not bad."

"In the face of this heinous event, neither the Quartermaine family nor the Webber family can justify supporting District Attorney Scott Baldwin or Port Charles Mayor Garrett Floyd in the upcoming elections. Our families have always supported both candidates and have continued to do so during the past few years, even when we didn't agree with DA Baldwin's harassment of Jason. However, we feel that enough is enough. Our patience has been tried and we cannot support the current mayoral administration if drastic changes in the PCPD's attitude are not made."

Jason winced. "Don't you think she went a little overboard, having them talk about the upcoming elections?"

Sonny shook his head, waving at him to be quiet. "No, no, it sounds good. Now shut up, I want to see what happens next."

"Wait – you think the Dragon set this all into motion?" Spinelli gawked. "Her? You think she'd actually convince the Webbers and Quartermaines to get on television and sing your praises? She hates them – and you hate them. And they probably hate you a little. Just a little."

Jason shrugged. "I don't think this will do a lot of good, but it has 'Elizabeth' written all over it."

Apparently, someone else thought so, too.

"Morgan, just what the hell kind of game are you trying to play?" Scott yelled, kicking the door open with entirely unprofessional force. "Where's Alexis?"

The lawyer popped her head into the room, looking absurdly pleased. "Yes, Scott? What's got your girdle in a twist now?"

But the DA wasn't having any of it. The man was positively _fuming_ as he stared down Jason and Sonny. "You're not going to get away with this. It's not going to do you an ounce of good."

"The Jackal always assumed goodness was measured in lollipops, not ounces," Spinelli mused quietly. "You live, you learn."

Scott whirled on him. "Geek Squad, you so much as say peep and I'll toss your rear into the next cell, you got me?"

"What are you talking about, Scott?" Sonny asked evenly, making a show of leaning back in his seat and folding his arms over his chest. Of all the expressions he'd mastered in his day, feigned, smug innocence was his strong suit.

"I'm talking about – about that ham-fisted, simpering, sob-fest press conference," he spat, gesturing to the muted television where Monica was saying something and dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a pretty handkerchief.

Jason shrugged. "Didn't even know about it."

"Don't give me that," Scott growled. "What did you do, have your goons force the Quartermaines and Webbers up onto the podium at gunpoint to sing your praises? You transparent son of a – you make me sick, you know that? Always thinking you can bend the law with your power and your reputation and your money, and when that fails, your family history and alliances."

Sonny smirked. "Sounds like someone else I know."

"You're on thin ice, Mister Corinthos," came a tightly drawn voice as Mayor Floyd came in right behind his District Attorney. "Don't forget that as soon as DA Baldwin and I get this business taken care of, we're coming after you on corruption charges and racketeering. I'd spend less time at the PCPD, harassing our officers and more time at home working on your defense case, if I were you."

"Corruption, racketeering, harassment," Sonny murmured, shooting Spinelli a sly look. "Now that sounds like someone _else_ we know."

"Your transparent attempts to sway public opinion won't work," Mayor Floyd shot back. "If you honestly feel that your family is so influential as to carve out a niche of defectors from my base, you're deluded. This little stunt you organized means nothing and will have little to no effect on the Mayor's office."

Alexis tapped him on the shoulder exactly three times, then touched her own nose. "Garrett, I appreciate your indignance, I really do, but would you mind pressing the volume button on the television?"

"What?" He glanced absently up at the muted set. "Yes, sure."

"What the hell…" Scott gawked at Nikolas Cassidine and Jasper Jacks as they interrupted a news commentator's report on the previous press conference with one of their own. "What are those two gomers doing?"

"_We thank the press and other members of the media for being present," _Jax was saying as he and Nikolas solemnly surveyed the large crowd of reporters, cameramen, and photographers that had literally just crossed the street to get to the second press conference being held not fifteen minutes after the first one concluded.

"_Myself and Jasper Jacks have made it a point in the past not to address the media in any matter unrelated to our entrepreneurial endeavors, but after recent events, we felt an exception was in order," _Nikolas added. Their speech seemed less practiced and deliberate, but Jason could tell nonetheless that it was staged and furthermore, that each man had practiced the air of suave civility he now exuded.

"Prince Cassidine and I have been doing business in Port Charles for more than a decade. In that time, we have each brought hundreds of thousands of jobs to this town, as well as millions in overall revenue generated. We are both members of the City Council, we sit on the board at General Hospital, we are members of the Historical Society, and we are active in creating charities, non-profits, and special grant foundations to give back to the community."

"_We also have ties with many other businessmen in the greater Tri-State area and have used these contacts to bring greater prosperity and recognition to Port Charles," _Nikolas boomed, conducting himself with the greatest amount of royal pomp he could muster. And as a Prince, he pulled it off and wore it quite well. Sophisticated and cultivated arrogance was his birthright, after all.

"_Among these businessmen are Jason Morgan and Sonny Corinthos," _he continued, leveling the audience with an even look that came off both commanding and self-assured. _"I myself have known these two men for years, and I consider them close personal friends, as does Mister Jacks. Sonny and Jason have always been the first to offer their assistance, financial or otherwise, whenever it was needed and they never hesitated to give their full support to an initiative that would benefit this town."_

"_Together those two men have brought tens of thousands of jobs to the upstate New York area, and thousands of jobs to Port Charles directly," _Jax confirmed. _"We consider them valuable allies and esteemed peers, and their treatment at the hands of the Port Charles Police Department, but more specifically the Mayor's office and the office of District Attorney Scott Baldwin, causes us great concern."_

He paused for dramatic emphasis and superciliously eyed the cameras. At this point, Mayor Floyd decided that he had enough and stormed out of the Interrogation Room and back into the relative safety of Scott's office.

"_We take the negative profiling of prominent local businessmen very seriously. And certainly, you can understand our apprehension: if DA Baldwin feels no compunction in dragging in a businessman of Jason Morgan's stature and harassing him this way, what is to stop him from dragging in myself or other high-profile figures?"_

"_We will never support the way Mayor Garrett Floyd and Scott Baldwin are handling this investigation," _Nikolas asserted sternly with perhaps the most arrogant expression to ever grace a human countenance. He'd most likely practiced such an expression in front of the mirror for hours on end when he was a boy. _"And we hope that this incident rouses the people of Port Charles to take notice of the abuse of power in our town, under the auspices of Mayor Floyd and DA Baldwin. Jax and I can no longer support either political candidate in the upcoming election and will instead be seeking a candidate with integrity and a strong sense of justice, because both men have proved that they do not understand the meaning of either."_

Sonny covered his mouth with his hand to hide a slow, smug smirk. "Nice."

Scott threw him a ferocious glare and lunged at him, hauling Sonny to his feet by the lapels on his coat. "Corinthos, you son of a bitch, I've had all I can take with your kind. I'm going to see you fry myself, you understand? You'll be lucky if your partner here even sees the light of day again when I'm through with him!"

"Whoa!" Spinelli was on his feet even before Jason and roughly tried to insinuate himself between Scott and Sonny, fisting each of their lapels and trying to separate them. "Hey! Stop! This is most unnecessary behavior!"

Alexis, hearing the commotion, poked her head into the room and clapped her hands giddily when she saw what was going on. "Oh, a harassment suit with assault charges on the side. How fun! I'll draw up the paperwork."

And then, because she had clapped her hands, she snapped the fingers of each hand once.

Spinelli and the guard finally succeeded in pulling the two men away from each other, and that was all the break that the boy needed. "You're going to want to watch your step, D.A. of Darkness. This cannot bode well for you."

Scott scoffed and adjusted his expensive tie. "Because of that press conference? Wise up, Geek Squad. The Quartermaines and Company aren't as influential as they like to think."

"I'm not talking about them, even though the Quartermaines, Webbers, Cassidines, and Jax all contributed handsomely to your campaign," Spinelli replied. "I am talking about your own personal indiscretions."

Scott snorted. "What the hell are you talking about? I've got such a damn headache…"

Spinelli held up the file triumphantly, almost as if he'd bash the D.A.'s head in with it which, really, wasn't all that bad an idea. "The Jackal has here a comprehensive record of all your past indiscretions including multiple charges of embezzlement and fraud. There are some nice accounts of cronyism in there, along with the occasional strangled hooker, and even an illegitimate spawn. You sure have been busy these past few decades."

He waved the file as Scott fumed. "And unless significant changes are made in the way Stone Cold's case is being handled – namely, the fact that it _is_ being handled and that he's not out frolicking in the-"

"I don't fucking frol-"

"YOU FROLICK NOW!" Spinelli glared at him and then resumed waving the file. "The Jackal will have no recourse but to make sure every last item in this file goes public. If the Quartermaines, Webbers, and the Intrepid Entrepreneurs can't do any damage on their own, this file certainly will. You have…what's a nice number?…two hours to think about it, D.A. of Darkness."

"SCOTT!"

It was Mayor Floyd poking his head out of Scott's office with a terrified look on his face. He bellowed again for his companion and Scott turned on his heel, forgetting Spinelli's damning evidence and chilling threat, and ran to see what the trouble was.

The Mayor waved for him to shut the door and then dragged him over to the computer. Through the open blinds, Spinelli, Sonny, Jason, and Alexis watched him gesture worriedly at the screen and then veritably explode. Scott looked shaken and tried to defend himself, but Garrett wasn't having any of it. He continued to rail and rant until his face turned a dark purple shade while Scott grew as pale as a ghost.

And then they both stopped, stared at each other for a few seconds, and whirled for the door. Alexis tilted her head to the side as she watched them race through the main room and toward the little offices in the back. "What do you suppose those boys are up to?"

Sonny and Spinelli peered out of the interrogation room but couldn't see anything. They did, however, hear them open a door and then some frantic rustling and then…

Enraged yelling.

"I don't believe this!" Garrett could be heard yelling. "How the hell could you let this happen? I should have known better than to trust you with this! You couldn't handle a conviction if Morgan was standing over the body and finger painting with fresh blood!"

They stormed back into the main offices, and Scott headed immediately for his office with the Mayor hard on his heels. He let Garrett in and then slammed the door shut, and Jason, Spinelli, Sonny, Alexis, and the other police officers could only watch through the partially opened blinds. Garrett continued to yell and gesture angrily and, noticing the peanut gallery, stalked over and snapped the blinds shut.

Spinelli sat back in his seat and beamed triumphantly. "It won't be long now."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Not long after…

Alexis stopped filing her nails and looked up when the door to Scott's office quietly opened. The District Attorney and the Mayor filed out, their expressions grim and their steps heavy. She slipped her file back in her purse and demurely crossed her legs, sparing Sonny a secret look.

He returned it but kept himself composed. In his seat across from Jason, Spinelli was beginning to hop. Actually, it was more like a jiggle. But it was still damned annoying.

Scott heaved a heavy sigh as he came to a stop in the doorway of the interrogation room with Garrett practically breathing down his neck. Reluctantly, he raised his hand and waved over one of the arresting officers.

"Jason Morgan, the Port Charles Police Department and office of the District Attorney formally drops all charges against you," he grumbled, waving the stunned cop forward to remove Jason's cup. "You are free to go."


	49. Chapter 49

**Note – **Good God, I'm back. This story needs to be finished like nobody's business. Sorry this is short, but if I added the next chunk it would have been 18 pages long and I would have wanted to hurt myself.

Hack | 49

"The Jackal and Stone Cold! You can't say we don't make a great team!"

Spinelli was exuberant as Sonny let the guys into his penthouse. Jason had exchanged his prison blues for a pair of jeans and the obligatory t-shirt, and all three of them were glad to finally be out of the PCPD and back home. Alexis had taken care of things in record time and even filed a few harassment suits just for fun, and everything had been taken care of.

Jason wearily flopped down on his best friend's couch and rested his head long the back, shutting his eyes. Spinelli continued to hop to a beat inside his head and ignored the odd looks Sonny directed at him. "We got anything to eat, Sonny?"

The mobster edged around Spinelli, now in the throes of his victory dance, and looked over as Max entered. "Yeah, sure, we do. I can fix us something. What's up, Max?"

"Nothing, Mister C, just wanted to say hey to Jason." The guard grinned at his employer as his brother and a couple of the other men popped up behind him. "Hey. We just wanted to say we're glad you got out."

"Thanks," Jason replied. "Sonny says you guys did good handling things while we were dealing with this."

"It wasn't a problem at all, boss." Max clapped his hands together and was about to leave when he saw Spinelli bopping around. "Um…did someone put a bug down his shirt again? What's he doing?"

"Looks like some variation of the robot," Sonny murmured, studying the boy as one would study a peculiar growth on a piece of bread. "Either that, or he's going into anaphylactic shock or something."

Jason ignored the boy – he'd grown quite used to doing that – and addressed the bodyguard once more. "Uh, Max?"

He noticed the hesitancy in Jason's tone but pretended not to. "Yeah, boss?"

"Is Elizabeth around…at all?"

"Uh, actually…" Max glanced to his left down the hall. "I was bringing her back to the penthouse and she fell asleep in the car, so I just carried her up here and put her to bed. Kid's exhausted."

Jason nodded, quickly tamping down his disappointment. "That's fine. That'll be it, Max."

"Right, boss. Call us if you need anything."

Sonny waited until the guards had left before he gestured to the kitchen. "I'm going to go see if I can fix us something. And Spinelli, for God's sake, stop doing that before you break your neck."

Once he was alone in the kitchen and out of earshot from his best friend and the geek with the coordination issues, Sonny pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed up the number of one of his men on the inside.

"Can you talk?"

There was a scuffle on the other end and then he could hear Cooper Barrett's voice loud and clear. _"Yeah, I can."_

Sonny glanced at the door and lowered his voice. "I want to know what happened in the DA's office this morning. Why'd they let Jason off so easily?"

"_The way Scott and Floyd are playing it, the Webbers, Quartermaines, and Jax and Nikolas made a really big impression and they decided to cut their losses to secure reelection,"_ Cooper explained. _"But that's total bullshit."_

"So what happened?"

"_I haven't found out all of it yet, but apparently there were two copies of the footage that Scott was planning to use to put Jason away. One he filed in the evidence room on the PCPD's server, and around that same time, a little before they let Jason go, our clerks were transcribing it on one of the computers there. Scott had the other one in his office and liked to play it on his computer."_

"So?"

"_At some point while the Quartermaines and the others were speaking, there was some sort of mess with the computer system at the PCPD."_

Things were already clicking into place. "Yeah?"

"_The computers blinked for a second, but everything came back almost immediately so no one really paid attention or thought much of it. Besides, we were too busy watching the press conferences. When Floyd went back into Scott's office to get the disk, it had been formatted."_

Sonny wasn't familiar with the jargon. "Meaning?"

"_Everything on it had been erased," _Cooper explained patiently. _"I heard him yelling for Scott to get in there and they went at it and Scott said he had no idea how it could have happened. He sent me to the Evidence Room but when I got there, our transcribers said they lost the footage in a pinch or something and they were trying to recover it but it was gone."_

A slow smile spread across his face, bringing out his dimples. "Thanks. That's all I needed."

Sonny grinned as he flipped his phone shut and put it back in his pocket. Elizabeth had come through after all, just as he knew she would.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Sonny? Jason?"

Elizabeth poked her head into her former guardian's penthouse and found Spinelli sitting at the dining room table. "Only you? Geez, where is everyone?"

"Stone Cold's out for a ride," Spinelli replied, figuring he could at least be civil to Elizabeth considering she lost the quest to free Stone Cold and was piteously bested by his Jackal-ness, "and also because we're out of beer, orange soda, and chips. Mister Corinthos Sir is in the kitchen."

"Elizabeth?" Sonny poked his head into the dining room and grinned when he saw his ward. "Hey, you're finally up. I came to check on you and you were out like a light. I was getting a little worried."

"I was absolutely exhausted," she admitted, walking over and letting him envelope her in a bear hug. "I haven't been able to sleep that well since Jason was brought in."

"A wonder the Dragon was able to sleep at all," Spinelli murmured under his breath as he tried to wrap spaghetti around his fork.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Sonny, who wasn't privy to the rivalry that had once again arisen between the two, ignored the exchange and led Elizabeth over to the table. "Now that you're here, you should eat something. I've got spaghetti and meatballs and I just finished chopping up the salad. Sit down, I'll fix you a plate."

"Thanks – I'm _starving_." It was true: she hadn't eaten in about twenty-four hours. Once she was in the depths of her programming and hacking, all her other needs fell by the wayside. It wasn't a healthy habit. "What are you so damn happy about, nerd?"

"Oh, nothing, Dragon," he replied breezily. "The Jackal has just had a most productive few days, that's all. There's nothing wrong with tooting one's horn now and then."

"I wasn't even aware you had a horn," she grumbled, looking up gratefully when Sonny set the food down in front of her. He had barely deposited the plate on the table before she reached for her fork and dug in. "Maybe a recorder. Or those two sticks you bang together, but not a horn."

"I hope you choke."

"Back at you, nerd."

He glared at her one last time but didn't have the heart to blast her further. After all, poor thing had to be feeling lowly enough that she had failed to oust her Stone Cold and instead had to rely on the Jackal's prowess to save the day. It was something the Dragon had better get used to.

Sonny came out of the kitchen with a glass of wine and set it down in front of Elizabeth while Spinelli sipped his water and then, much to the boy's surprise, he leaned down and kissed her temple, giving her a hug while she was eating.

"Sonny, you're going to make me spill," she warned, choking on her food. He pulled back and affectionately tucked her hair behind her ear, then took a seat next to her.

"So, can I get you anything else? I had the guys bring brownies from Kelly's for dessert – I know they're your favorites – and they're in the kitchen whenever you want them."

Elizabeth didn't even bat a lash at the way he tried to spoil her; Spinelli assumed it was because she had come to expect it by now. "Thanks, Sonny, I think I will."

The next ten minutes passed with Elizabeth shoveling down first her dinner and then her dessert as Sonny fawned over her, much to Spinelli's disgust, and then the brunette pushed her seat away and left the table.

"Going out, sweetheart?"

"Just for a little while," she replied, looking around for her purse.

Spinelli's mouth soured. "Aren't you going to wait for Stone Cold?" he reminded her rather indelicately. "He's been in jail for forever – and you only visited him once – and is expected home any minute now."

"I won't be gone long," she promised. "I promised Stan and a couple of the guys I'd meet them at Jake's real quick – we have to talk about something, that's all. I'll be back."

Sonny smiled and watched her go as Spinelli hunkered down at the table, his arms tightly crossed in front of him.

Really.

He had previously regretted planting the seed in Stone Cold's head that something untoward was occurring between the Dragon and Jasper Jax – a ridiculous notion that had been sorted out soon enough when the press conferences aired – but now he found himself staring at his initial conclusion: Stone Cold could do so much better.

~*~*~*~*~*~

_Later…_

"I gotta know, Mister Corinthos Sir," Spinelli finally spoke up as Sonny rearranged the magazines on his coffee table for the twentieth time. "Why are you so giddy tonight? I mean, I know you're happy that Stone Cold's out of the big house, but still."

"I just…" He picked up one of Elizabeth's computer magazines and grinned. "I'm still just so glad I was wrong. About everything."

Spinelli followed his gaze to the magazine, realizing what Sonny meant. "But – you're not talking about Stone Cold and the Dragon, are you?"

"So what if I am?" he asked happily, moving on to adjust the pictures on his mantle. He had a ton of pent-up energy and seeing as how Jason hadn't gotten back yet, he needed something to do. "I'm actually very encouraged."

"About what?" the boy burst out. "Stone Cold was in jail for a week and the Dragon couldn't be torn away from whatever it was she was doing long enough to visit him more than once. Meanwhile, he's rotting in his cell and she's having dinner with just about everyone in town, and to what end-"

"I don't know, Spinelli," the mob boss interrupted smoothly. "I think you may be looking at this with blinkers on."

"What blinkers?" he demanded. "The facts are very simple: Stone Cold was in prison, the Dragon folded, and the Jackal's super sleuthing freed our hero. The end. It's a story for the grandkids!"

"You keep your computer in your lap twenty-four-seven," Sonny pointed out. "Don't you think grandkids are kind of out of the question at this point?"

Spinelli rolled his eyes. "You keep your phone in your pocket – I could ask you the same thing."

"Touché."

"I still don't get what you're so happy about. The way I see it, Stone Cold and the Dragon are as good as over. In the relationship sense, I mean. There's nothing wrong with a booty call now and then, but-"

"Spinelli." Sonny cleared his throat, not all that keen on picturing the image he was describing. "I don't think you're giving Elizabeth enough credit."

"Might as well not, since everyone around here gives her too much credit," he persisted. "I mean, come on! Every single person around here is always talking about how great the Dragon is, how smart, how funny, how loyal, how stubborn, and all the rest of the words in Mr. Johnson's dictionary. But what has she done to deserve that? She's rude, she's narrow-minded, she's insane, she's territorial, she's aggressive, and she's an attention hog that always wants the credit for everything."

"Now listen here-"

"Hey, guys." Jason let himself into the penthouse, a puzzled look on his face when he realized he'd walked in on a somewhat heated conversation. "Uh…what's going on?"

"Nothing," Spinelli and Sonny replied in unison.

Jason didn't believe them, but he let it go as he scanned the penthouse. "Uh…so, Elizabeth up yet?"

"The Dragon went out," the boy informed him dryly. "You just missed her. Again. Seems to be a pattern with you two…"

Sonny rolled his eyes and glanced at his watch. If he knew Elizabeth at all… "Hey, Jason."

"What?"

His obsidian eyes glittered smugly. "What say we go to Jake's?"


	50. Chapter 50

**Note – **I am aware that Spinelli isn't that well-liked in this fiction (even though, oddly enough, he did win Favorite Non-Liason Character in the 2007 Safe Place Liason Fic Awards). That's okay to me. :P Not every character has to be liked; I'm certainly not trying all that hard TO make him liked in terms of his teenage angst and inferiority complexes. I like when the chips fall where they may and readers are comfortable enough to say, 'Sorry, don't feel sorry for him. What a dink.' LOL.

Hack | 50At Jake's…

"All right," Coleman called out as he brought out a few bottles of tequila. "Let's get this started. Looks like everyone's here!"

Ironically, he announced this just as Jason, Sonny and Spinelli happened to walk into the dive, safely unseen as they lurked in the corner trying to figure out what was going on.

Elizabeth was sitting at a side table with Stan and a couple of others and looked up with a smile when Coleman set the liquor on the counter along with a massive amount of shot glasses.

"All right, let's get these filled up. Milo, my man, wanna help me do the honors?"

Jason watched in confusion as the young guard moved forward to help. "What the hell's going on?"

"What are all the Silent Sentinels doing here?" Spinelli wanted to know. "Look, there's Milo, Stan, Johnny, Max, Ritchie, Trevor, Francis, Marco, Trey…Hey! There're Benny and Bernie. Oh! And the Regal One. What's he doing here?"

Sure enough, there was Nikolas, sitting at Elizabeth's table. They were smiling and talking about something, and the Prince seemed perfectly at ease in the ratty dive among the bodyguards. Presently, a couple of hostesses moved around the room with little platters of shot glasses and set a number of them before each guard before they were asked to leave the room.

Coleman, who was familiar with the mob rule and could be trusted with the less-than-legal goings-on in the town, called for everyone's attention again as Ritchie hopped up to sit on the counter and beckoned Elizabeth to sit with him. One of the hostesses, the last to leave the room, noticed Jason, Spinelli and Sonny standing in the corner and brought them each a shot glass before leaving and securely shutting the door behind her.

"Okay, so, turn your attention please to the lovely little girl with the little curl right in the middle of her forehead." Coleman grinned lasciviously when Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "And you all know what they say about those kinds of girls."

"Speech! Speech!" Johnny chanted.

Elizabeth shook her head before the others could start. "No way! You guys know me – I stink at speeches! Ritchie should do it."

"Ritchie's gonna be too piss-drunk in a minute to do much of anything," her friend replied good-naturedly. "Man, can you _tell_ I'm looking forward to my three days off? By the way? Anyone that's interested? Counter Strike marathon at my place tomorrow night."

"What are we doing with this many shot glasses?" Nikolas wanted to know, eyeing all the liquor set before him.

"A series of toasts, I thought," Elizabeth replied, picking one up. "Okay, let's make this quick and easy. In honor of me, though, you all have to do it the way I do it. With salt and limes. Lick it, slam it, and suck it. Ready?"

"Wussy way to do it," Ritchie grumbled, nevertheless picking up the lime Coleman and the girls had set out. "Okay, guys, knock it off. Let this idiot say whatever she wants to say and then maybe we can finally get some peace around here."

Elizabeth smiled and let that go. "Okay, first off, I just want to thank all of you for putting up with me the past few days and doing whatever I asked without question. Oh, and also for taking good care of Sonny and Spinelli and visiting Jason whenever you could. It really means a lot."

"Get to the good stuff! Stop being so fruity!"

She picked up a shot glass and held it up. "Okay, fine, get ready to knock 'em back. First…here's to you guys, for being awesome and taking care of things like you always do when Sonny and Jason are incapacitated."

They knocked back the first shot more or less at the same time and then sucked on a lime. Elizabeth noticed that Coleman had watered her tequila down some, but she didn't have the heart to be mad at him for it. Besides, with all the liquor in front of her, she'd probably be cross-eyed and singing "Whoops, Mrs. Miggins, You're Sitting On My Artichokes" in no time. If the watered-down tequila kept her buzzed instead of sloppy drunk, all the better. The guys would just be even more impressed that she could hold her liquor, and Elizabeth wasn't above cheating to gain that regard.

"Okay…Here's to the Qartermaines for being greedy bastards and always understanding the bottom line more than the family line."

The trio in the corner watched as the guards and Nikolas downed the next shot.

Elizabeth smacked her lips together and shook her head, trying to clear the buzz she felt already coming on. "Okay… And to the Webbers and Hardys, for being sentimental and such."

Max stopped her before she could down the shot. "Toothpick, I've been meaning to ask, what did you have to promise your folks to get them to do the press conference with Jason's folks?"

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Myself."

"Wanna be a little more specific?"

"I promised them that I would have tea with them every Friday afternoon for two months before they agreed," she grimaced. "Starting this week."

Some of the guards winced. "Ouch. Tough break."

Rather than respond, Elizabeth downed the shot and slurped on a slice of lime, trying to offset the bitter taste. "Ready for the next one?"

She cleared her throat and took the shot Ritchie handed her. "Okay…Here's to Sonny taking a loss on one of his piers so that I'd have something with which to entice the Quartermaines to give that press conference."

Jason gaped at her, unable to believe that she had gone to both their families to do all that just for him, but Elizabeth was hardly done.

"And here, of course, is to our amazing Prince Nikolas Cassidine and the ever-charming Jasper Jacks who couldn't be here for getting up in front of those cameras and giving their own press conference just because I asked."

The men raised their glasses to Nikolas, who held up his hand modestly and downed his own.

"Oh, God." Elizabeth shook her head and coughed, trying to clear the back of her throat. "Okay. Whoosh. Here's to, um, here's to the boys in blue at the PCPD for being bumbling clods – and to our guys on the inside there."

"To Cooper," Sonny agreed, downing his own shot in time with the rest of the gang.

"And to, um, to…oh, god, what's his name?" Elizabeth clenched her eyes shut and tried to think. "Squirrelly, nerdy, odd fascination with plaid shorts…Spinelli! Here's to Spinelli!"

"Spinelli," Ritchie agreed, appearing to lose balance for a minute. "Couldn't have done it without him."

The boy in question perked up at the remark until he heard what Elizabeth had to say next.

"Here's to wonderful, sweet, loyal Spinelli for being so wrapped up in his Stone Cold One and his utter dislike of me that he didn't notice a thing I was doing and gave me a free pass. Here's to Spinelli for being so predictable and a great decoy, spending his time digging up dirt on Scott so that I could create my virus, hack into the PCPD mainframe, and fry their drives. Spinelli!"

Jason glanced down at the boy in time to see him wilt, and he would have said something that almost passed as encouraging if not for what came next.

"And here's to Jason." Elizabeth blushed at the cat-calls that ensued and angrily waved her hand for the guys to shut up. "Um…Here's to Jason. For, um, being Jason. And stuff. And not being in jail anymore."

"Not being in jail anymore," the sloshed guards agreed, downing the last shot.

"Oh, God, I'm going to be sick," she laughed, resting her head against Ritchie's shoulder. "Make the room stop spinning, would you? Oh!"

She straightened so quickly that she almost lost her balance on the counter. "Guys! One more thing! Do me a small favor? Keep quiet about what I did. Let Spinelli think he's responsible for getting Jason out."

Milo wasn't following. "What the hell for? You're the one that-"

"I know, I know," she interrupted. "But just let him think he did it, okay? Please? He's been down lately and I think he just needs a win to be back to his normal goofy self. So lips sealed, 'kay?"

The guards mumbled their agreement, already engaged in other conversations now, and Elizabeth turned to Coleman. "Can I get a club soda for now, Coleman?"

"Sure thing, doll. Here ya go."

"I have to admit, kid, you can handle your tequila all right," Ritchie smirked, elbowing her as she sipped the clear drink.

A slow smile made her appear even more devious than usual. "Thanks, Ritchie."

Sonny cleared his throat awkwardly and looked down at Spinelli, who looked like he'd been hit by a dump truck. "So, uh, you wanna get some more tequila? Something stronger? Come on, let's go get a drink."

"I, uh, thanks all the same, Mister Corinthos Sir, but it's late and I should probably get home and hit the hay." He held up his hand when Jason tried to protest. "No, really. I haven't slept much these past few days so it's way overdue. You guys have fun."

Sonny watched with a grim expression as Spinelli crept out of the bar, careful not to be noticed, and finally turned to Jason. "Think he's going to be all right?"

"I think he is," Jason nodded. "And I think he needed that."

"How do you mean?"

"All his stuff these past few days about Elizabeth being an emotional girl and not doing her part…" Jason shrugged. "I wanted to say something to him but he was too worked up about me being in jail, so I didn't have the heart to. But he's got to figure out that, yeah, he's really good at what he does, but he doesn't have a monopoly on it."

"I think he's figured that out."

"It's kind of my fault," Jason admitted. "You know, why Spinelli is the way he is when he sees that a girl can do what he does. These past few years that we've spent together…well, I wasn't with anyone. And I always told him – since we were always on the move – that getting to know a girl would just slow us down, and not to do something stupid like that. He might have been okay if I hadn't told him stuff like that over and over."

Sonny shrugged. "I wouldn't worry about it. He's young. Teenage angst or whatever they call it. He'll figure it out. Or he'll fall for one himself and have no choice but to change."

Jason couldn't help but smile. "Spinelli with hormones…just shoot me when that happens."

"I was going to ask you to pull the trigger on me," Sonny remarked dryly. "Come on, let's go get a drink. Lord knows I need something stiff after that visual."

They moved through the crowd and were naturally spotted immediately, and the guards took a break from the drinking and the darts to come up and personally congratulate Jason on his acquittal. He accepted their warm wishes with gratitude and shook hands all around when his men insisted on doing so, saying that he was just glad to be back at work.

Elizabeth and Ritchie were still sitting on the counter and talking, and the brunette let out a squeal when she saw him. "Jason! You're here!"

He grinned and let her throw her arms around his neck, moving closer so that she wouldn't topple off the counter. She held on to him tightly, despite the jeering directed their way, and buried her face in his neck.

"I missed you," he heard her say so that only he could hear.

Jason pulled back just enough to press a quick, harmless kiss to her lips. It was so much less than what he wanted to do, but just what he could get away with in a room full of his subordinates. The hesitance, the uncertainty, the doubt, all of it bled away when her felt her arms wrap around him again and Jason could hardly believe how relieved he felt upon the realization that a woman like Elizabeth would always be around to support him.


	51. Chapter 51

**Note – **I do want to finish this story. Just…so badly. It needs to be finished out. :-P

**Hack | 51**

Jason rolled away from the afternoon sunshine that invaded Elizabeth's bedroom and turned onto his other side, wrapping his arm around her narrow waist. She was still sleeping soundly, and he didn't blame her. He'd pretty much worn her out.

She had been hopelessly drunk the night before when they got back from Jake's – even though Ritchie told him that she'd been having watered-down tequila, much to his amusement – and had fallen asleep almost immediately. He'd been away from her for so long that Jason didn't much feel like returning to his penthouse with Spinelli snoring right down the hall, so he put her to bed and fell asleep with her tucked against his side.

In the morning, he got up to order breakfast and take care of a few things, and by the time she woke up, hung over and badly in need of coffee and wheat toast, everything had arrived and they'd shared a quiet, late breakfast together. Afterwards, she showered while he finished up his work, and then, wordlessly, he'd joined her in the bedroom and neither one had managed to leave since.

And though he knew Elizabeth would deny it, this time had been different. She'd probably say that it was just an aftereffect from all the excitement of the night before, that it was just because they weren't used to being away from each other like they had been when he was in prison. She'd probably have a million different excuses for it, but Jason knew better.

This time had been different.

It hadn't been just about sex, though if he were honest with himself he'd admit that it hadn't been 'just about sex' for some time now. At least, not for him.

He knew all about her commitment issues, even thought he shared them. They were very similar due to the aftermath of their accidents, but the difference was that Elizabeth was much more attached to Sonny than he was. He always viewed Sonny as a brother first and a partner second, someone that would always support him and give him guidance. For Elizabeth, Sonny was the closest thing to a father she'd ever known. He loved her and protected her and cherished her and thought of her interests first, even when he didn't relish that the object of _her_ interests was a man about eight years her senior.

And while the thought would have scared him a year ago, Jason was actually starting to be comfortable with it now: He wanted Elizabeth. He wanted her in every way. He just wanted to be with her, for one night, for one lifetime, for everything in between. He was ready to commit to her in any way she'd be comfortable with, because he knew somehow that it would never get better than this. He would never be happier or more at ease than he was when he was Elizabeth. Sure, she was infuriating and irritating and didn't do so well with orders, but she made him a stronger person, and he liked who he had become since being with her.

And perhaps most amazingly enough, Jason found that he was secure enough in himself and in his feelings for her to not really mind if she wasn't there yet. He knew that people developed and grew at their own rate and it was unrealistic to expect her to want the same things as he did at the same time that he did.

Jason dropped a kiss on her shoulder and nuzzled her creamy skin, grinning when she let out a humming sigh and stretched. She was still half asleep but as he peppered her shoulder and the back of her neck with small kisses, Elizabeth rolled over until they faced each other. Jason dragged a hand through her chestnut curls, pushing it away from her face, and smiled when she nuzzled into his touch.

He didn't even care that he was turning into that pathetic, romantic kind of guy that just sat around and watched his girlfriend sleep.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Elizabeth woke up to the sound of Jason's steady snoring. When she opened her eyes, she saw that he was on his back, his mouth open, emitting a noise that would have put a buzz saw to shame.

She curled her hand into a fist and propped it under her cheek, watching him.

God, he was such a nerd.

She hated him so much.

And Elizabeth would have believed herself, too, if her hand hadn't crept out just then, as if of its own volition, and settled tenderly over his heart. She could feel it beating, feel it matching the steady tick of her pulse.

Jason must have felt her touch somehow because he turned his face toward hers. He was always so peaceful and relaxed when he slept; it made him look years younger.

She brushed her fingers through the soft, sandy hair at his temples and let her fingers trail down his strong jaw. She'd done nothing but sit and stare at him for so long that she'd memorized all of his features, the impossibly strong line of his jaw, his angular cheek bones, his pouty lips.

Elizabeth never thought she'd see the day when she paid so much attention to one particular man's face. Especially when she hated that man's face. She'd told him that often enough, namely when he ate all her food and wouldn't let her watch TV because the game was on – _even though it was her damn television._

She drummed her fingers lightly on his chest, smiling slightly when he sighed. Jason was always so responsive to her touches. But beyond that, he was in tune with the rest of her. Sure, he annoyed her occasionally, but she felt that was just part of the whole boyfriend package.

More importantly than that, Jason was one of those men that knew when to be with her and knew when she needed to be by herself. He never begrudged her those solitary moments; he understood and was more than happy to let her do her own thing. He didn't need her hovering over him, he didn't need her to validate his abilities, but he was smart enough to appreciate when she felt like doing those things.

Elizabeth ran her hand down his side, and if she wasn't mistaken, she would have sworn that the corner of his mouth curved up as he slept. His skin was darker than hers from all of his years wandering the world, and so warm. She rubbed his flank, feeling the thick, strong muscle there, knowing that her fingers were skirting over one of his scars.

Her thumb flirted with his navel, brushing through the sandy hairs there, and Jason mumbled something halfway incoherent as he reached for. Elizabeth evaded his searching arms and pushed herself up. She was sitting up halfway and her hair tickled his bicep and shoulder. The corner of his mouth hooked up and he reached for her blindly, his fingers tangling in her dark locks.

Elizabeth grinned and lifted herself all the way up, kicking the sheets clumsily off her legs before she straddled him on all fours like a cat. Jason's fingers gently massaged the back of her neck as she leaned down and pressed a kiss to the spot where his jaw met his neck and worked her way down until she was at the column of his throat.

Her kisses slowly roused him from sleep, and Jason arched his neck to give her better access. His hand skimmed down to the small of her back and he tried to apply pressure there, the sneaky bastard, to bring her down to him, but Elizabeth was smarter that and arched her back, resisting. She remained on all fours over him, languidly kissing the sensitive skin on his neck before she pressed a kiss to the base of his throat and pulled back, looking down at him.

Jason was fully awake now and grinned slowly up at her. The afternoon sunlight made his eyes twinkle, and Elizabeth was powerless to keep from smiling down at him. He was adorable, even when he wasn't trying to be. But there was a maturity to him, a sense of being well-grounded and solid and secure, that drew her to him like none other. No matter what happened, she knew this man wouldn't change. His values, his beliefs, his conduct were constants in her life that she appreciated more than she ever thought she would.

If there was one thing to be said about Jason and her relationship, it was that he kept her grounded when she was with him.

It was different from Sonny. She needed different things from Sonny. He was the one that took care of her, the one that protected her like she was his own, and the one that always took care to arrange their lives so that she was well situated and happy. Sonny was selfishly about her best interests, and she took advantage of that.

Jason wasn't as blindly devoted to her, and she liked that. He had no problem telling her when she needed to quit it or when she just wouldn't get her way no matter what. He told her the truth, whatever it was, and stood by it. He was one of few men she couldn't con or manipulate, and she was just starting to realize how important it was for her to have someone in her life like that.

"Hey."

Jason grinned impishly. "I thought I wore you out. You up already?"

Elizabeth snorted and tossed her hair out of her face. "No thanks to your monstrous snoring."

She kissed his chin and, just as he was going to pull her closer, ducked under his guiding hand and placed a hot, open-mouthed kiss in the middle of his chest. She nipped him lightly, feeling him shift underneath her, and peeked up at him.

With a slow, seductive smile, Elizabeth pushed herself back up to her full height and she loomed over him. Jason smirked up at her and she just gazed down at him. They shared a long moment that way, just looking at each other. No words were exchanged, but none were needed.

Elizabeth swept her tongue across her lips, moistening them, and delighted in the way his eyes darkened. Wiggling her eyebrows, she finally broke his gaze and nuzzled his chest, easing her weight down onto the heels of her hand as she kissed and licked and nibbled a slow line down his chest, along the line of fine, sandy hair that went to his navel and then continued on, lower and lower.

Jason groaned and tangled his hands in her hair as she left him, shifting as her hot breath fanned out over his skin, as her fingers traced his pelvic ridge before her delicate hands kneaded the strong muscles of his upper thigh, and actually bucked up off the bed when her lips found him at last.

Elizabeth grinned as she held him down firmly with her hands. Despite this shift in their relationship – which she had no idea whether he was privy to or not – at least she could be thankful that the sex was still good.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Spinelli glared at Jason and Elizabeth, who were standing in the foyer of Sonny's penthouse, their hands linked as they stood face to face and talked. Elizabeth's eyes were bright, her grin teasing and disarming, her voice lilting and bubbly as she tried to coax and wheedle him to get her way, and Spinelli didn't quite like the way Jason was smiling that beleaguered, exasperated smile.

Stupid Dragon.

Making his Stone Cold stupid as well.

God, they were both so stupid.

He wondered what she was after this time. Maybe she wanted him to take her to one of those stupid plays or ballets girls liked to go to. Maybe she wanted him to take her out to dinner. Or maybe she was just bothering him like Spinelli liked to do, also.

He hunkered back on the couch, still glaring at the couple. Despite his misgivings and resentment, even Spinelli had to admit that Elizabeth had trounced all competition. She kept her nose to the grindstone and came up with the perfect plan to get Jason out of prison. It was fool-proof, solid, and got results. While he'd been mucking around in the minor leagues, collecting Scott's old skeletons, Elizabeth had gone in and destroyed the evidence outright making all hopes of getting Jason before a jury vanish into thin air.

The Dragon had vanquished the Jackal.

And he could no longer pretend that she hadn't.

Elizabeth had everything now. She had the glory (even though she was keeping her mouth shut and trying to let Spinelli think he'd done good), she had his beloved mentor, and she most likely had the job.

After this most recent display, Sonny and Jason would have to have been stupid not to hire her as their technological guru. Elizabeth proved that she was a master of coding as well as equally adept at analyzing the big picture and concocting grand schemes. She'd played everything perfectly. She had gotten the guards to rally around her and put all of her pawns in place; she called together her friends Nikolas and Jasper Jacks and let them in on a portion of the plan; she used her family's desire to be closer to her and the Quartermaines' desire to be closer to the Billionaires' Club; and she burned the midnight oil and took care of all the technical stuff herself.

It was brilliant.

It was flawless.

It was made of win.

And he hated that he hadn't been able to think of it first.

He sighed and slowly shut the lid of his computer, setting it down on the couch next to him as Sonny returned from the kitchen with an afternoon snack. He set a tray bearing two mugs of coffee and chocolate-dipped biscotti down on the table, and Spinelli saw how Jason eyed it before Elizabeth grasped his chin and forced him to look at her.

Sonny picked up the paper from the coffee table and settled down in his favorite armchair. "What's going on?"

Spinelli shrugged. "I think the Dragon wants Stone Cold to do something."

"When is that not the case?" the mob lord muttered, flipping the newspaper open to the page he'd last been reading. "Today's Friday, right?"

It was indeed Friday, three o'clock, which explained why Elizabeth was standing in the foyer dressed in a cream-colored silk blouse, teal and black trumpet skirt, and leopard print shoes, looking beseechingly up at Jason.

"Come on, it'll be fun."

"No, it won't," he scoffed, looking like he'd swallowed something rank. "How can you even say that?"

The brunette pursed her lips and placed her hand on her hip. "How can you think you even have a choice in this?"

"Elizabeth, I'm not going to visit your grandparents with you."

She stomped her foot. "Damn it, Jason-"

"Forget it," he said, putting his hands up. "There's no way in Hell."

"But they'll have food. You like food!"

"They'll have _tea_ food," he grimaced, like items of that nature were virtually inedible. "Besides, Sonny already made me coffee."

"That's Spinelli's," Sonny interrupted, leaning closer to the boy. "Take a sip. Take a sip before he takes it from you."

Spinelli dutifully took a sip as Jason glared at him.

"See?" Elizabeth said pertly. "Sonny made coffee for him and _Spinelli_. That means you have to come with me to visit my grandparents."

"No."

"Jason! You have to!"

"No, I don't."

"But it's all your fault!"

"Yeah?" He folded his arms over his chest and glared at her menacingly. "How do you figure?"

Elizabeth's dark eyes narrowed. "I only promised to visit them once a week for two months to get your stupid butt out of jail. So you owe me."

"Hey, no one asked you to make that promise."

How she didn't lash out then and just kick him in the shin was beyond all of them, even Jason. "You ungrateful nerd, I hate your face!"

"I don't even visit _my_ grandparents – what made you think I'd visit yours?"

Sonny sighed. "He's got her there. Better pour another cup of coffee."

"I wouldn't count her out yet," Spinelli imparted glumly. "She's probably got a way to make him."

And sure enough, a smug smile touched Elizabeth's lips and she reached out, gently grasping his shirt and tugging him down so she could whisper in his ear. Spinelli and Sonny watched as Jason's irritated frown gave way to surprise, then irritation once more as he weighed his options.

"And tomorrow night," he finally ordered, wagging a finger at her.

Elizabeth grinned, and though her voice was still low, they managed to catch what she said. "I'll give you one every other night if you finish out my two-month sentence with me."

A muscle in Jason's jaw ticked furiously as he actually considered this, and they could see his confliction. On the one hand, he hated the idea of visiting her grandparents, although he found Steve Hardy just a little more tolerable than his own grandfather. On the other, Jason clearly acknowledged and appreciated all her work on his behalf, and he obviously wanted whatever it was she was offering to give him every other night.

Frankly, Sonny preferred to think that Elizabeth meant she'd give him gumdrops, instead of anything untoward.

"…Fine."

"Yay!" She hopped up and down and grabbed his arm, dragging him to the door before he could change his mind. "Let's go."

"You were right," Sonny said, looking at him when the door slammed shut. "Want a biscotti?"

Spinelli looked at the cookies. "…Can I have the kind with nuts on it?"

"Yeah." He set the paper down and stood. "I'll go get it – hang on a minute."

The boy sighed as Sonny left the room and took another sip of his coffee, one of Sonny's special brews, roasted just the way Spinelli liked it. He figured that he might as well soak up the charms of the easy life before he was kicked out on his butt and made to fend for himself.

**Author's Note – **I no longer wish to post any of my stories at this site, mainly because of people who complain about stupid things and the people that take those people seriously. Personally, the latter strike me as much more ridiculous than the former. I will be posting all updates of everything at Solo Ensemble, my site. No one has ever bothered to complain there about anything, and that works for me because it's an online site and does not need to be taken so seriously. If you want to know what happens to any of my (versions of GH) characters, come to my website. I will try to post links and update dates on my profile as well. Registration at SE is free, fast, and easy. If you do not get your activation email, just try registering with a different email and checking your Spam folders. If you are still unsuccessful, please email me and I will do my best to fix it. To visit my site, click on my profile or the banner below. Thank you! And thanks to everyone who PMed me and saw my side of it and agreed that things HAD gotten beyond ridiculous. I know most of those people are refusing to post here as well, so you know where to find me. All of you. :)


	52. Chapter 52

Stone Cold was spending every single night at Elizabeth's.

Before he was arrested and hauled off to jail, he'd at least made an attempt. He spent five nights a week at her place and two at his penthouse. He tried to have his coffee at his penthouse and go through his papers there just so they could both cling to the illusion that he was still an independent man with a place of his own, not some shmoopy co-dependent.

Now…that was not so much the case.

Not so much the case at all.

Penthouse 4 might have still legally belonged to one Jason Morgan, but Spinelli was the only one living there. Jason spent every night for the past month at Elizabeth's, no doubt exacting the terms of their deal that had him visiting her grandparents every Friday. Spinelli preferred not to think of such lewd things as his beloved, pristine (or, rather, formerly pristine before the Dragon sank her claws into him) mentor getting it regularly. Frankly, such things disgusted him.

Probably because _he _wasn't getting any, and his prospects didn't look to be improving anytime soon.

Jason even had coffee with the Dragon, and Spinelli had it on excellent authority (from Milo, who was once unlucky enough to walk in on them) that they liked to lounge around on the couch in their pajamas - or sometimes abhorrent lack thereof - until they had to change and shower and join Mister Corinthos Sir for breakfast in Penthouse 2. Once there, the routine appeared even stranger. Stone Cold and the Dragon hardly spoke to each other directly unless the conversation called for it. Stone Cold would never turn to the Dragon and ask her what her day ahead was to entail, nor would the Dragon comment on what Stone Cold was wearing.

They participated in general conversation but never initiated it specifically with each other, but their actions, more than their words, were highly perplexing. The Dragon had started fixing Stone Cold's coffee. It was easy enough since he didn't take it with milk or sugar, but still. And Stone Cold, in turn, took to making sure there was plenty of sugar on the table for the Dragon to stir into her coffee, or that the whipped cream she liked to have on her crepes was readily on hand for her breakfast enjoyment.

It was getting quite sickening, that.

So with his mentor's absence felt even more acutely thanks to the Dragon, Spinelli took to spending even more time on his own. This proved extremely dangerous before long and he learned his lesson, so he then took to spending more time with Mister Corinthos Sir, who seemed to appreciate the company and was likely suffering the same withdrawal when it came to his own ward. They never really did much. Mister Corinthos Sir had become quite the homebody, not unlike Spinelli, and he'd think nothing of Spinelli coming over with Princess Peach (who had recovered nicely from the Orange Soda Tsunami of a month earlier) and plopping down on his couch. They didn't talk all that much, just sparse, easy conversation, and Sonny never sent him home without being sure he was properly fed.

The abundance of food and hospitality in the Corinthos home both delighted and depressed Spinelli. On the one hand, he'd never in his life had gourmet food with such regularity. Mister Corinthos Sir was a most excellent cook and never quite mastered the art of cooking for just one or two people, so there was always a lot left over and Spinelli had gotten into the habit of having leftovers for lunch. When he didn't eat with Mister Corinthos Sir the night before, he was in the habit of tossing meat, vegetables, and a cup of water in the slow cooker he'd received on his birthday and having stew for lunch or dinner. Stew was what he'd grown up on, all different sorts, and was oddly comforting.

It also reminded him that the spectacular cuisine was not something to get used to, as he'd most likely be out on the streets before the end of the year since he'd demonstrated with no degree of uncertainty that he was just a shade behind the Dragon in talent and mastery.

There was, however, an elephant in the room whenever he and Mister Corinthos Sir sat down together. It was, of course, the position of the tech guru, for lack of a better word, for the Corinthos-Morgan organization. Stone Cold never spoke of the terms of the position or the candidates; such things were beneath him now, Spinelli assumed. Mister Corinthos Sir was a generally unflappable sort and didn't mention it either. But every time Spinelli was around him, he kept expecting Sonny to open his mouth and gently but firmly tell him that he hadn't made the cut and that he and Jason agreed that he was to be off their property in two weeks' time.

The Dragon, meanwhile, was most at ease. She was secure in her victory and couldn't be troubled; her spirits simply couldn't be soured. She wrote her articles for her online tech magazine, she attended her classes at PCU, she did whatever little assignments Sonny sent her way, and she spent time with Stone Cold. The two of them had indeed fallen into a routine of co-dependence and what was more, actually seemed pleased about it. From what Spinelli understood, they hadn't yet exchanged the three fatal words, but for all appearances they might as well have.

Life in the world of Corinthos-Morgan was idyllic. Everyone had stepped into the niche that had been carved for him or her and things were going wonderfully, smoothly, perfectly. Spinelli, of course, didn't think he could share in this almost nauseating harmony. Every night as he lay in bed, trying vainly to get some sleep, he ran a quick mental check of all his possessions stowed away economically in the closet, and thought about how, if he had to, he could be out of here in a moment's notice, gone without a trace. And he wondered, in a year, in two, in five, if they'd even remember him.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Elizabeth always thought she'd be a lousy co-dependent.

She mostly thought this because of the boys. Ritchie and Milo were the first to tell her that she was a horrid, stubborn brat that always wanted her own way, and it became a self-fulfilling prophesy of sorts. If they thought of her as someone that would fight until she got her way, then that was what Elizabeth would do because she already knew that they were at least a little predisposed to giving in. This dynamic was established not long after her full recovery from the accident, when most of the men in Sonny's employ were fully used to her presence and didn't resent her the attention she got from Sonny.

They told her she was stubborn, they told her she was selfish, they told her she was narcissistic, they told her she was neurotic and a shrieking harridan, but they only meant that in the best way possible. She knew how the men felt about her, men like Stan and Ritchie and Francis. Elizabeth knew that as much as they complained about her and pretended to be put out by her presence sometimes, they enjoyed her company in a collegial way. They were always available to lend an ear when she needed to vent, and they always stopped in specifically to ask her if she'd like to go with them to Jake's. Aside from all that, they let her know with little gestures - refueling her car before it hit the quarter-tank mark, making sure the waitresses at Kelly's remembered the chocolate sprinkles on her cocoa, things like that - that they considered her a friend, someone to care for and be cared for by.

And Elizabeth always did her best to live up to that. There wasn't a whole lot she could do for those men, not a whole lot they'd let her do, but she tried nonetheless. It was pretty much a given that if any of them ever had computer troubles, she'd be over as soon as possible to help out. She had been on the phone with Ritchie for an hour, remotely advising him when he set out to put together a wireless network in his sister's house; she carefully explained to Francis how to operate his DVR and even wrote it out, step by step, and she cracked Johnny's iPhone to allow a different phone carrier. They knew she was handy with that sort of thing and she was the first person they called. If she was busy, it fell on Stan, who was a very quick learner and becoming more skilled by the day even though his primary area of expertise lay in bombs and wires and that sort of thing.

But aside from that, she tried to be helpful in more traditional ways. Feminism on principle annoyed her; she saw it as a rather convoluted set of ideas. Elizabeth understood that it argued against a woman having to do certain things - cooking, cleaning, watching Oprah, being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen - simply because she was a woman, but she felt the paradox lay in the fact that hard-line feminism also argued against women doing certain things - crying, adoring the color pink, wearing strappy stilettos that were a bitch to walk in but looked gorgeous - because they were women. So she pushed those things aside and let herself be a useful friend to the men around her in a more traditional sense.

Thanks to Sonny, she'd become a rather decent cook and knew what her friends liked to eat. Ritchie, being a down home Italian boy, loved lasagna and Parmesans, so she made him a big pan of it for his birthday and special occasions when she invited him and the others over. Francis loved canolis, so she bought the shells at the store and made the filling herself, at times experimenting with different flavors and extracts. Johnny loved macaroni and cheese, and she'd perfected her recipe by trying it out, over and over, on him. It passed with flying colors every time. It really didn't put her out at all to be able to do these things for her friends, each of whom had done so much for her, and Elizabeth was happy to do it.

Aside from that, she liked to be the gal pal that they could come to when it came to advice on women. They realized she wasn't the typical woman what with her accident and all, but the men figured that she was the best they had. So they'd come to her when they wanted to know how to properly flirt with a girl so they'd get her in their bed, instead of getting a slap in the face. They called her up if they ever needed advice on clothing. And they emailed her particularly confusing voicemail messages left by those of her gender so that she might decode them and make sense of the passive-aggressive rants.

So from all this, Elizabeth knew that she was good enough to keep around that way, but always figured that if some poor sucker was stuck with her around the clock - Sonny didn't count - that she would make them both miserable. And she could not have been more delighted to learn that this was not the case.

Or at least, she suspected it wasn't the case. After all, Jason hadn't run out of her penthouse screaming just yet (although he had once threatened to, minus the screaming part) so she figured she might have been doing something right after all.

At first she thought it was the sex. The mind-blowing sex. (Was there any other kind? Not as far as Jason was concerned, as she'd discovered early on.) Sex had a way of bringing people together (ha!) and she knew that it was what kept Jason attracted to her in the beginning.

Even when he was so mad at her that he could spit, he still tossed that all away if the promise of indiscretion hung in the air. He was a rough, noisy lover and had a way of bringing out that side in her, too, and for a long time she felt that the sexual connection above all was what was keeping the two of them from biting each other's heads off any time they had to be in public...together...with their clothes on.

But as time passed, the sex faded into the background, replaced by other things. More meaningful things, she might have called them, if she hadn't been so averse to the prospect. She got to know a lot about Jason, about the sort of man he was, and although there were a few things she rather disliked, there were many, many more that she didn't. And if she hadn't been so afraid of the word, Elizabeth Webber might have even admitted that she was falling in love with the man.

And now they were practically living together. Well, really, they _were _living together. He was over every night, he stayed until morning, hell, he stayed until he absolutely had to be at the warehouse. And as soon as he was done he came home to her, and they either stayed in or went to Jake's or went for a ride, and then had dinner with Sonny, and then figured out something to do after that. They'd settled into a routine, and surprisingly enough, the concept and reality were not entirely revolting.

Elizabeth was actually _happy _with the way things were.

Provided nothing changed.

And provided he didn't do anything stupid.

She glared at him out of the corner of her eye, watching him scratch himself as he flipped through the channels so fast that the television was more like a strobe light than a means of entertainment.

Boys always did such stupid things.

Nerds. All of them.

Jason caught her staring and arched a brow. "What are you thinking about?"

Elizabeth batted her lashes at him and returned to her book, knowing that he hadn't liked the look in her eyes and wanted an explanation. "Oh, nothing."

~*~*~*~*~*~

Spinelli set his plate in the sink and returned to the main room of Penthouse 2. They had chicken with broiled peaches and goat cheese, accompanied by a side of perfectly cooked spinach with pistachios, and he was absolutely stuffed. Stone Cold and the Dragon had already flopped down on the couch, his arm stretched out behind her and her head resting on his shoulder, and Mister Corinthos Sir was rummaging through the wet bar for port.

With a sigh, he drew closer and lingered behind an arm chair, trailing his fingers over the back of it.

"Look, all I'm saying is that the new expansion plan for ELQ is stupid. You come from a stupid family."

Jason rolled his eyes, but Spinelli saw his fingers move gently up and down her arm. "You should talk. Your grandfather pulls out the same pocketwatch every single time we go visit them and talks about how it's been in your family since the first world war. Every single damn time."

"Don't insult my grandfather."

"You don't even like him."

"Correction," she said, wagging a finger at Jason as she simultaneously accepted a glass of port from Sonny. "I _barely _like him. There's a difference."

"You've called him an old goat about seventy times since I met you."

"So?" Elizabeth remained stubborn in her dictate. "I can call him whatever I want. _You _can't."

Spinelli watched Jason shoot her an amused look. "So why do you get to say that I come from a stupid family?"

She pulled a face. "Because you do. It's an elementary statement of the facts. I'm not saying anything that hasn't been proven over and over, you know."

Jason sighed heavily but shared a beleaguered look with Sonny, and Spinelli couldn't even articulate the feeling of obscurity that came over him just then, all of a sudden, in a single instant with one single look. He felt forgotten, overlooked and easily so, and as if he could no longer reasonably expect to be a part of this scene anymore. It was good, he thought, as he pulled away from them. It was good that he felt this way, that he got used to this feeling, got used to the way things were.

"I-I'm going to head out for a bit," he managed to choke out, his hand frantically clutching at the doorknob. "Be back later."

"Honestly, if I came from a family as dumb as yours, I'd have to shoot myself."

Spinelli sighed, shutting the door as Elizabeth chattered on, and leaned against it in the hallway.


	53. Chapter 53

**Note – **One last bump to get through before this story is finished: the little matter of who wins the prized position as technical guru for the Corinthos-Morgan organization. I just needed one last mopey chapter before stuff happened. Thanks to those of you that voted in the Next Update poll.

**Hack | 53**

The movement of her sapphire-colored irises drew his attention once more, and Spinelli's eyes narrowed as he watched Elizabeth once again cross and uncross hers as she stared at the thick book in front of her. He was trying to fine-tune his resume and work on putting it out there for future employers, and from what he gleaned from present circumstances, the Dragon was trying unsuccessfully for the umpteenth time to make it through a suspiciously new-looking copy of Proust.

"Do you have to do that?"

Elizabeth looked up in surprise. "Do what?"

"Cross and uncross your eyes like that," he groused, hunkering down in front of his laptop again. "It's distracting."

"Aw, diddums," she sneered, pulling a face at him. When she saw that he was ignoring her, Elizabeth settled back in her seat and flipped to the next page, hoping she might have better luck with that than the one she was on. "Jeez, what's wrong with you?"

"Nothing's wrong with me," Spinelli hissed under his breath. "I'm just trying to get some work done without you crossing and uncrossing your eyes like a...like a...like a stupid person."

"How shall I ever recover in the face of such a witty retort?"

"Retort this: Shut up."

"Retort this?" She wrinkled her nose. "What does that mean? Is that supposed to be a threat?"

He grumbled far-from-complimentary things under his breath, presumably about her, and resumed his task. Elizabeth had no idea what he was doing but if he was smart, Spinelli would be fine-tuning his hackery skills. After all, she'd so clearly put him to shame when she rescued Jason.

Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. It felt so weird to say the words "rescue" and "Jason" in the same sentence, but that was effectively what she'd done. If it weren't for her work, he'd be facing a jury and an almost certain conviction right now.

Ha. Maybe Spinelli had better start calling the guy 'Fair Jason' from now on.

She shuddered and tried again to bury her nose in her book. Dear Lord. It was probably best not to delve too deeply in the very strange relationship between the nerd and his 'Stone Cold One.' Only bad things could happen if she did that. It would be best for everyone concerned if she just shut her yap and focused on Proust.

Proust, the depressed psychopath that spent twenty years working on a book that no one read.

Yeah, there was a real winner.

Elizabeth sighed again, drawing a profoundly irritated but only slightly murderous glare from Spinelli that she didn't notice. But in the end, she was saved from the unpleasant task of actually reading the book by Sonny and Jason, who walked into the penthouse just then.

"Do we have to go to this thing?" Jason was asking.

"For the hundredth time, yes," Sonny replied, flashing the kids a smile as he headed for his desk to set aside the files he held. "It's Ragno's fiftieth birthday, we have to go. And yes, you're wearing a suit."

"And I don't want to hear a whole big thing about it," Elizabeth drawled in perfect unison with him as Jason glared sullenly at them both. "What are you two up to?"

"Nothing much." Sonny securely locked the drawer and patted his pocket, making sure he had his keys. "But I've got to meet Nikolas at Wyndemere in about half an hour, so I'd better get going. He said something about wanting to open up some sort of foundation, I don't know. Says he needs my help to push it through the board. So..."

He shrugged. "There you have it. What about you two?"

"I've been trying to come up with ways to avoid reading this," Elizabeth admitted, dropping the book on the dining table with a thunk before Spinelli had a chance to reply. She hopped up from her seat and walked over to Jason, who was leaning against the desk.

"Hey." She slipped her arm around his waist and gave him a poke. "I've got a great idea. Let's go out to _Cafe Moonlight_ and make fun of all the couples there for a nice, romantic dinner to distract ourselves from the fact that we'll also be there for a nice, romantic dinner."

Jason laughed. "I don't have to change, do I?"

Elizabeth was already grabbing her purse from the little end table and pulling him toward the door. "Nah. You're Jason Morgan. If they tell you it's a suit and jacket establishment, just make some threats. _I don't wear no suit and jacket. Ayyyyy._"

"Since when did he become the Fonz?" Sonny wanted to know as he followed them out. "I mean, I know the leather jacket makes for an eerie likeness, but still. Allow the man his dignity."

"That was the first thing she demanded when we started seeing each other," the enforcer dead-panned, letting her pull him into the hall. "You want us to give you a ride to the launch?"

"That'd be great," Spinelli could kind of hear Sonny reply. The next part sounded like the mobster was asking if Jason was the god of the spade, but he figured that was because the trio was already out in the hall with the door partially shut. If they realized that they had basically just forgotten about him – and failed to inquire about his (non-existent) plans for the evening – they didn't come back to make amends.

And just when he was wishing that their heads would fall off at a very awkward moment, the door opened again. Spinelli perked up, half-thinking that it was one of them extending an invite to dinner either to _Moonlight_ or Wyndemere. His expectant green eyes landed on Sonny, who jerked a thumb toward the kitchen.

"Spinelli, before I forget: leftovers in the fridge. And if I get any calls, do me a favor and take a message. Thanks. See you later."

His lips settled into a disgruntled line as the door closed again, and Spinelli slammed down the lid of his laptop and folded his arms over his chest. He took it back: he _did_ hope that their heads would fall off at a most awkward moment.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"What the hell is your problem?"

"I have no problem!" Spinelli yelled back, taking a step closer to his nemesis. "All I ask is that when you and Stone Cold get back from your nightly sojourns if you could not yell at each other while I'm trying to sleep!"

"We weren't yelling," Elizabeth cried, throwing her hands up in the air. "We were talking. About what a stupid putz you are."

"It _sounded_ like yelling," he shot back, giving her a tough jab in the shoulder. "Would it kill you to show some basic human courtesy once in a while, or does your species have specific rules about that kind of conduct?"

She wasn't following. "My species...?"

"Dragons," he ground out. "There's a historic council of dragons that every two and a half centuries compiles a specific code of – you know what, never mind. Just knock it the hell off."

"You don't get to tell me what to do," Elizabeth snarled, barely hearing the door open. "Whatever Jason and I decide to do is not your concern. You've had a problem with us seeing each other from the start, so I don't know _why_ I'm surprised that you're once again being a pissy little bitch about it."

"_I'm_ the pissy little bitch?" Standing at an angle, he didn't see Sonny and Jason enter the penthouse. "Oh, that's rich, coming from you, she who practically coined the term! Don't think for a second that the Jackal has ever found your impudence, your caustic remarks, or your hyperactive personality the least bit charming!"

"Horse's ass!"

"Wildebeast!"

"Whoa, whoa!" Sonny leapt forward just as Spinelli lunged at Elizabeth, and Jason quickly wrapped his arms around Elizabeth's waist and lifted her up as she lunged for Spinelli. "Okay, I don't know what's going on here, but that is _enough_!'

He loosened his grip on the young man but quickly grabbed him again when Spinelli tried to take a swing at Elizabeth. A few feet away, Jason was exhibiting much more intelligence and still had Elizabeth wrapped up in his arms so firmly that she could barely move. Clearly, he didn't trust her. Clearly, he was a very sensible man.

"What's the matter with you two?" Sonny wanted to know, looking back and forth between them. "You've been getting along just fine for weeks now. You haven't hit each other in months."

Good God, it was like talking to a pair of three year olds.

"She started it," Spinelli snarled.

"Oh, real mature," Elizabeth hissed. "Don't listen to him, he's lying. He always lies."

"Stop it," Sonny ordered. "Now, are you two going to tell us what happened?"

"He was being a pissy little bitch about stuff."

"_She _was being a pissy little bitch about stuff."

"God, I hate your face."

"Well, I hate your voice, but I still have to listen to it, so it looks like we're both screwed."

"Fine." Sonny exchanged looks with Jason, who just nodded in reply. This was alarmingly similar to dealing with two warring rivals in the business, and once they thought of it like that, the men realized that they weren't as far out of their league as they thought. "If you two can't get along, you're not to be around each other anymore."

Spinelli pulled a face. "You're quarantining us? In what world does that make sense?"

"In the world where the fact that if I see your face I'll rip it off is a known axiom."

Jason gave Elizabeth a little shake, as if she were a puppet, but otherwise ignored the two of them. "Ground rules. Spinelli, you are _not_ going to go to Elizabeth's penthouse any more. For any reason."

"Well, that's a no-brainer," he grumbled.

"Not even to play RRD."

"DDR," Elizabeth corrected quietly. Across from her, Spinelli looked mildly troubled by this qualification.

"Fine. I can deal with that."

"And not even to steal her monkey lamp."

"Oh, come on! That hardly qualifies as a social visit! It's more like objective recon! You love recon!"

Jason ignored him. "And Elizabeth, you're not coming to this penthouse anymore until you two can fix things between you."

"What?" she squawked. "How is that fair? This is _my_ penthouse!"

"It's _my_ penthouse," her boyfriend corrected. "And besides, I'm never here. We're usually at your place. It won't be that different. This place is practically Spinelli's anyway."

The thought that he was gifting – really, that was the only word for it – her beautiful penthouse to that stupid nerd had Elizabeth seeing red, but there wasn't much she could do to challenge it. She had already consulted Alexis about it and it turned out that under New York property law, she had no claims to Penthouse 2.

Damn her luck.

"...FINE."

"Sonny's penthouse is neutral territory," Jason announced. "If either of you are there, you're prepared to call a temporary truce until you leave. That means no name-calling, no baiting, no arguing, no pranks, and no physical fighting."

"Failure to comply will result in immediate ejection from the penthouse," Sonny added, "and you don't get a single bite of whatever it is I make for dinner that day."

Spinelli and Elizabeth, both of whom had been about to challenge this, immediately shut their mouths. Really, there were some things in life one just didn't risk losing.

"Same goes for the hallways," Jason picked up again. "They're neutral territory, too. If you see each other in the hall, you have to be civil. And physical contact in both places is restricted to handshakes."

Elizabeth snorted. "Who's shaken hands since, like, the second grade? Not me."

Spinelli rolled his eyes. "That explains so much."

"Hey, if you have some kind of hand fetish, far be it for me-"

"You know what I meant! I was commenting on your naturally closed off and stuck up disposition!"

"I am not stuck up, you dopey hick!"

"Ooh, look at me, I'm the Dragon, I bathe in milk and wash my hair in beluga caviar, ooh, get out of my way."

"It's a face and hair product line that contains small _amounts_ of milk and caviar! Everyone knows that! Everyone but you!"

"Knock it off!" Sonny glared murderously at both of them, instantly quieting the two, and cleared his throat. "Like we said, the hallways and my place are neutral territories. No antics."

"Anything goes in the elevator, though," Jason couldn't resist adding in. "You can beat the shit out of each other in there if you want, as long as you knock it the hell off once you hit the lobby."

"Sound fair? Good," Sonny nodded without even letting the two chime in. He held Spinelli back as Jason half-carried Elizabeth out the door to her own penthouse. "To your corners."

~*~*~*~*~*~

_Mr. Spinelli,_

_We appreciate your interest in the position we have available and thank you for submitting the application. We have already filled the position but would like to keep your information on file for future positions with our company as they may become available. Thank you._

_Donald Hoffman_

_Port Charles Credit Union_

That was the fifth rejection email that day, sitting in his inbox. Spinelli scanned it quickly, wished that an onion would fall on Donald Hoffman's head, and promptly sent the message to the Trash folder. He thought for sure that he'd get the job at the credit union. After being told that there were no open positions at PCU's IT department and after failing to secure a job at any of the seven banks in Port Charles, he figured that the credit union position would come through. It was an easy job and he was way overqualified for it.

Maybe they hadn't liked that as an alternate name, he listed "The Jackal."

Hm.

Perhaps he'd have to slowly phase out that moniker.

Spinelli shuddered and shook his head, going into the Trash folder to permanently delete that stupid email. There was no need to be hasty just because he was disappointed.

On the couch, Jason grunted and shifted on the cushions, scratching his chest as he flipped away from the news that he'd been watching while the football channel had gone to commercials. Spinelli frowned at him, his fingers tapping restlessly on the edge of his keyboard.

"What are you doing here tonight?"

Jason stared at him blankly. "...I live here."

"I thought you said that you lived at the Dragon's," he half-sneered, very much intending the jab. "What's up with that?"

He rolled his eyes. "I don't _live_ there...I just stay there most of the time. Besides, she had some thing going on tonight."

"Aha," Spinelli grumbled. "That explains it."

"Explains what?"

"Why you two aren't sucking face at the present moment."

"Knock it off."

"Where'd she go?"

"Some lecture at PCU," Jason replied, and it was clear that he was already distracted by the game. "Don't know, didn't hear the whole thing. She won't be back for a little while still."

"And then you'll probably head over to her place," Spinelli sighed, opening another tab in his browser and heading back to .com. Gone was the malice, in its place only weariness.

"Yeah, probably."

"...Stone Cold?"

"What?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"What?"

"Has the Dragon ever said the three fatal words to you?"

"Three fatal words?"

"You know, those three words that people say when – oh, don't make me say them. This whole thing already disgusts the Jackal enough."

"Oh." Jason frowned at the television screen, surprised that Spinelli would ask something like that. "No. No, she hasn't."

"...Have you?"

"No."

"Why not? You do, don't you? I mean, I've already lost you for good, I think, so you might as well remove all doubt."

"Elizabeth knows how I feel about her."

"Really?"

"Shut up and do your computer thing."

Spinelli pulled a face and broadened his search preferences. If he had to move out and get a real job, he probably wouldn't be able to afford wireless internet. He'd have to get dial-up, if anything, or live at a Starbucks and nurse a latte for five hours just to mooch off their public wi-fi.

"Yeah, while I still can."

Jason looked over at him. "What?"

"Nothing." He turned toward the door and sighed when he heard the elevator. "I think the Dragon's home."

"Perfect timing, too." Jason flipped off the television and quickly got up, heading toward the door. "Commercials."

Spinelli sat silently until the door slammed shut, then leaned back on the couch. It was a sound he was becoming all too familiar with.


	54. Chapter 54

**Hack | 54**

"Bye, Spinelli."

Sonny tousled his hair as he slung his bag over his shoulder, waving Max away when he tried to take it from him. Spinelli grunted in reply, immediately reaching up to fix his hair, and grunted again when Jason smacked him – _too hard_ – on the back.

"Later."

He pursed his lips together wistfully. "Goodbye, Stone Cold. The Jackal will miss your-"

"We'll call you as soon as we touch down," Sonny promised, kissing Elizabeth on the cheek when she threw her arms around his neck. "Do whatever Ritchie tells you, and we'll see you in a week."

She let her hand trail down his arm as Sonny reluctantly pulled away. Max kept checking his watch, concerned that they were a few minutes off schedule, but he was the only one that particularly cared. Sonny and Jason had been invited down to Costa Rica to stay at the home of a former associate that lived in self-imposed exile down there to discuss a business proposition, one that Sonny was apparently keen on accepting.

Elizabeth rose on her toes when Jason kissed her, his large hand settling in the small of her back to pull her even closer, and the two were unmindful of the faces Spinelli made at them. "See you later," he murmured when he finally pulled away. "Stay safe."

"We will," Elizabeth promised. "Go, go, you'll be late. Have fun, you two."

Sonny waved over his shoulder as Jason grunted sardonically. Social calls – even business meetings – in other countries just weren't his thing. He liked getting things done close to home, close to the home turf. Leaving for even a few days now made him jumpy and uncomfortable, whereas before, with only him and Sonny, he would have thought nothing of it. Even as he was leaving, he couldn't help but glance over his shoulder one last time at Spinelli and Elizabeth and hope they'd both be safe and sound when he returned.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**.: Penthouse 2 :.**

Spinelli had stepped up his job search. His goal was to have a solid lead by the time Stone Cold and Mister Corinthos Sir returned home. That way, when they were getting settled back in and taking care of local business matters that cropped up while they were out of the country, he'd go unnoticed as he went out for interviews and by the time they were fully settled, he could inform them that he would no longer be mooching off their generosity.

Yes, sir, the Jackal was going to make his own way in this world. Maybe. Kind of. God, he hoped.

He sighed again and blinked at the online application he'd been filling out for the past half hour. Normally he could zip through forms like these, but this one was taking forever. Probably because he just didn't want to fill it out.

The Dragon, god damn her to the bowels of Hell, had no similar worries or frustration. As it was, she was sprawled out on Mister Corinthos Sir's green couch with a magazine and her mp3 player, not a care in the world. She had just given herself a manicure and so her toes were separated by those stupid rubber things and she was wearing her pajamas with her hair wrapped up in a towel, some sort of deep conditioning treatment she hadn't been able to shut up about.

She was going to live in this bullet-proof palace for the rest of her life. She was going to grow up here, she was going to marry Stone Cold, and she was going to raise her children here, not leaving once if she didn't feel like it.

And why not? She'd earned it. She was the one hand-picked by Mister Corinthos Sir to join his world, be a part of his life this way. Of course, it had come about because of a terrible accident, but Mister Corinthos Sir was still the one who came to her in the hospital and took her in when she needed him, just like Stone Cold found Spinelli and took _him_ under his wing when he needed him. It wasn't the Dragon's fault that she won out in everything.

…It was just so easy to be angry with her for it, though.

He could see the top of her head moving back and forth to the rhythm of whatever song she was listening to.

"_Do I attract you? Do I repulse you with my queasy smile?"_

"Oh, you repulse me for other reasons, Dragon, if you had any idea…"

"_Am I too dirty? Am I too flirty?"_

"Well, we wouldn't really be in this situation if you hadn't been all flirty with Stone Cold, who certainly never would have fallen for you otherwise…"

"_Do I like what you like?"_

"I changed some of the things I liked because you liked them, too. I changed them on principle, so there."

"_Yeah, I could be wholesome."_

"I don't think so…"

"_I could be loathsome."_

"There it is!"

"_I guess I'm a little bit shy."_

"Being shy has never been your problem, Dragon. You've got many of them, but being shy isn't one."

"_Why don't you like me?"_

"Do you have twenty minutes?"

"_Why don't you like me without making me try?"_

Spinelli slammed his pen down onto the table. "You're not the one trying! You've never been the one trying! It's always been me! You just waltz around because you own the damn place and you know Mister Corinthos will never say anything to you because he loves you like he spawned you, and Stone Cold won't say anything to you because you're sleeping with him and that's fine because it's what works for you, and hey, creative problem solving, I get that, but honestly, why do you have to be so good at all the things _I'm_ good at? Can't you leave _anything_ for me? Just anything? Just one thing that meant I could stick around and-"

Elizabeth took her ear buds out of her ear and turned around. "Sorry, nerd, did you say something?"

His lips settled into a tight line. "No. Leave me alone."

She shot him a strange look but turned around, slipping her ear buds back into place. _"I try to be like Grace Kelly…but all her looks were too sad. So I tried a little Freddie – I've gone identity maaaaaad!"_

~*~*~*~*~*~

**.: Penthouse 2 :.**

"What do you want to have for dinner?"

"Whatever's in the fridge," Spinelli mumbled, scrolling through his missed calls to see if he'd gotten a call back from that research lab he'd applied at.

"There's nothing in the fridge."

"There's always something in the fridge."

"Um…not when there's no one around to cook it," Elizabeth snipped.

He glanced up at her. "Well…why don't you cook something?"

Her jaw dropped. "I'm not cooking something for you! After you've been a little bitch to me all week?!"

This time it was Spinelli's turn to be shocked. "Me? A little bitch to _you_? In what world?"

"This one!"

"Hardly!"

"Are you kidding?" she demanded, planting her hands on her hips. "You've been a total little bitch to me! Always whining, always sulking, always insulting me for no reason – normally I wouldn't care, but I didn't even _do _anything to you. I was even _nice_ to you."

He had to admit, she had him there. Not that he'd tell her that.

"Whatever."

"Oh, that's your answer to everything. You're such a jerk."

"You're the jerk."

"Great comeback."

"I was mocking your comeback. That's why it worked."

"It didn't work."

"Your face doesn't work."

"My fist sure as hell does."

"Oh, I'd like to see you try."

She advanced on him and Spinelli quickly backed away. "Hey, hey! Mister Corinthos Sir's penthouse – neutral territory."

A wicked smile made her lips curl. "Your Mister Corinthos Sir isn't here. Or did you forget?"

A knock on the door interrupted what would have been sure to turn into an epic brawl, and Ritchie poked his head in. "Hey, guys. Thought I'd get you some dinner before I took off. Enjoy."

The two perked up when Ritchie came inside and set two boxes of Luna Mezzo Mare pizza on the dining table, along with an order of Spinelli's favorite breadsticks.

"I'm on assignment until tomorrow night, so don't call me or need me," he told them. "There are guards in the hall if you do need anything. They're lower level, so I added a couple extra. And try not to terrorize them."

"No promises," Elizabeth murmured, picking a cheese-covered tomato off one of the pizzas and popping it in her mouth, whole. "Thanks, Ritchie."

"Night, guys."

"If I get the soda, will you get the plates?"

"Orange, please," Spinelli replied, finally letting his guard down as Elizabeth moved away. He followed her into the kitchen and retrieved plates and napkins, then sat down as his computer as he waited for her.

While he waited, he checked his email, the secure one he'd set up when he joined the organization, just to see if he had anything. Spinelli was overjoyed when he saw what was waiting in the inbox.

"Dragon! Dragon!"

She came into the room and shot him an irritated look. "What?"

"Look!" He spun the laptop around to show her. "Stone Cold emailed me! Well, he emailed us. He knows how to use his secret email address now!"

Elizabeth squinted at the screen. "…Damn, he actually does. Nice. Send him back a link to porn or something."

Spinelli laughed and clicked away from the tab. "I should. What do you think they're doing down there? In Costa Rica, I mean?"

"Drinking. Playing cards. Smoking cigars. Visiting casinos and eating out at great restaurants. The usual."

"…When would they do business?"

"In between all that."

"Ahh." He clicked away on his keyboard as Elizabeth began to pull the squares of pizza out of the box, mindful of the stringy cheese, and set them on the plates. "I wonder if they got anything done. It would show up on the system if any transaction went through…"

"I can have your mushrooms, right?"

"Yes, please," he muttered, "hate that stuff. Okay, let's see…"

Elizabeth plucked all the mushrooms off his slices and deposited them on hers, then added a liberal dash of dried Italian herbs, crushed red peppers, and parmesan cheese to both. "Oops, forgot the ranch dressing. Be right back."

Spinelli was still typing away when she got back, making no move to touch his food, so she assumed this meant that he wanted some dressing, too. Elizabeth recapped the bottle and sat down at her place, biting into the first slice.

"God, I don't know why the other pizza places in town didn't just close up after Luna Mezzo Mare opened up," she got out around a mouthful of food. "Game over. Go home. Am I right?"

"Ermhmkhmpm…"

She rolled her eyes. "Charming, I'm sure."

"…That's not supposed to be there…"

"Sorry, I thought you wanted dressing, too. Because, clearly, it makes everything even better and all the cool people like it."

"…What…what's going on here? What is all this?"

"Oh, my God," she got out in exasperation. "Will you stop bawwing over your stupid anime messageboards? Just eat, nerd, it's getting cold."

"Not that," he muttered, his fingers flying furiously over the keys. "Can't eat now. The server's been breached, there's a leak and all of this is being downloaded to an external…oh, no. Oh, please, no."

The terror in his voice was enough to make Elizabeth get out of her seat and come up behind his, leaning down to read over his shoulder.

"What is it? What's going on?"

He turned slowly, his green eyes wide. "It's the Feds. I…I think they waited until Stone Cold and Mister Corinthos Sir were out of the country before they closed in."


	55. Chapter 55

**Note – **I made up words for this update. What do you want? I'm not a computer expert.

**Hack | 55**

"Oh, shit. Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit."

"What do we do?" Spinelli was so worried that he'd actually started flapping his arms a little in some sort of mini-flail. "What do we do? Stone Cold and Mister Corinthos Sir are incommunicado – what do we do?"

"Can we get a hold of them?" Elizabeth wanted to know. "Wait! No! I don't know what I'm saying – if we call them in C-"

"Shhh!" Spinelli leapt out of his seat so fast that the chair toppled over. Elizabeth thought he was coming at her and ducked out of the way, then turned and stared at him as he went straight to the stereo and started pushing buttons. In a few seconds, one of Sonny's mixed CDs of old Puerto Rican songs was blaring over the surround-sound speakers.

"If the Feds are already this close, they might have been able to bug the place," Spinelli told her quietly now that he knew he couldn't be overheard. "We need background music – foreground music, really."

"Good call," Elizabeth replied, walking with him back to the computer. "Can you find out if they're in the area? If they're close physically, too, or just stealing information online?"

"I'll log into the secure server so they can't retrace my steps or see me," he said, clicking away on the keys. "Cloaking devices – they're not just for superheroes."

"We can't call them in Costa Rica, either," she murmured, racking her brain for some semblance of a plan as he worked. "We better not chance it. If it turns out that they're close, they might have bugged the penthouses _and_ bugged our lines. It's not hard to do, especially with the Patriot Act."

"I'm going to find that bug you put in Stone Cold's penthouse one day," he told her absently. "Mark my words…"

"Oh, keep working, nerd," Elizabeth ordered. "Okay, okay, so we can't risk calling them. Max and Milo and Francis and them are all down there with them. Ritchie – oh, shit, Ritchie's on recon. We can't get a hold of him, either."

"Is the Sentinel even trained to deal with such crises?"

"He would have had some ideas," Elizabeth retorted. "It's better than just the two of us on this."

"But the Sentinel is unavailable," Spinelli repeated, the corner of his tongue sticking out of his mouth as he hacked. "So it's just us. What are we going to do?"

"I'm trying to think," she said, kicking at the leg of his chair. "Just shut up and stop being a nerd and let me think. Okay, this is what I'm good at, right? Big picture, big picture. Oh, my God, I hate this stupid song. Okay, big picture."

She was pacing now by the balcony and once she realized this, sat down next to Spinelli and yanked her pizza toward her so that if they were being watched from the window, they wouldn't look overtly suspicious.

"All right. The Feds are investigating and taking information from the accounts. They've only got the main ones now, and they won't find out much from that, especially if they're trying to play the tax evasion game that they got Capone on."

She raked her fingers through her curls and continued to think. "Sonny and Jason pay all their income and property taxes on all property in the States, so they're fine. It'll keep the Feds busy for a little while, though, but not for too long. Next, they'll move on to…the Cayman accounts."

"I've got coordinates!" Spinelli yelped, grabbing her hand and pointing to the screen. "Look, look. I've got a lock on them. They're set up at the Metrocourt. Field agents, not the big guns. But still, if they're just across town-"

"Then they've had this planned for some time," she finished. "They were literally waiting for them to leave home so they could start snooping. Meaning they've probably got our place staked out, too."

"Which means the phones are off limits, and our cell phones are risky, too." He bit his lip nervously. "I have those chips that I worked with the Night Ninja on, the ones that make it impossible to lock coordinates on the phone or trace calls or tap them, and so on, but I'm not that confident in them. They were prototypes – me and the Night Ninja intended them to be stop-gaps as we worked on the real chips, but then the contest between me and you came up and things fell to the wayside."

"It's okay," she assured him. "We just won't use our phones unless we really need them."

"Do you think the Night Ninja could help on this?" Spinelli asked hopefully. "Three cabesas are better than two, right?"

"I think it would be safe to call him, right? I'll just be careful." She bit her lip and punched in his speed dial number, frowning when it rang six times before going to his machine. "Uh, hey, Stan! This is Elizabeth. Listen, me and the nerd are home alone and we thought we'd take advantage of it. You know, playing really loud music and ordering way too much pizza. We'd love it if you came and helped us finish it. We ordered way too much food. Way. Too. Much. Food. See you soon. Bye."

"Fingers crossed."

"Agreed," she murmured, shooting him a look. "See if you can track Stan down. Find out where he is."

"On it."

"Okay, okay, think, think. Sonny and Jason are out, Stan might be out, the guys are out. Meanwhile, the agents are practically next door and we have very limited access to our resources if we want to keep from looking suspicious. There's no way to warn Sonny and Jason…wait. Wait! Jason used the email address you set up for him – he used it today! We can get in touch with him through that, finally. I'm going to go get Mister Perkins."

She darted out of the penthouse to hers and when she got back a few minutes later, Spinelli was scowling at Princess Peach. "I got a lock on his phone. It's at his apartment."

"Yeah? Great." Elizabeth set her laptop down on the table next to him and pulled up her email so that she could let Sonny and Jason know what was happening. "At least we know he's around."

"Problem."

"Being?"

He turned his screen around. "The advanced version of Google Earth I use shows that…Stan's not in his apartment. Look. Lights off. Rooms empty."

She made a face at the satellite images. (God, technology was awesome. This was the same stuff the CIA used to spy on other countries.) "So he left his phone at home."

"Looks like it."

"Try to find his car. We've got a tracking device on it."

"It's in the lot. Wherever he went, he didn't take his car."

Elizabeth snapped her fingers. "Shit, was he supposed to go with Ritchie on the assignment? Do you remember? Shoot, I think he was…"

Spinelli threw his hands up in the air. "Then he's of no use to us and we just wasted ten minutes trying to track him down. And since there's no way to lock the information for the organization without immediately tipping off the authorities that we're on to them, we can't even-"

"We don't have time to worry about that now," Elizabeth reasoned. "They're still most likely checking the financial statements, right? That doesn't matter. They're not going to learn anything more than that Sonny and Jason know how to add. That means we move on to the important stuff. They don't keep a lot of business files about business dealings and shootouts and assignments and all that online, but I do know they have some of it backed up. We have to seal that off."

"We can use a simple encryption wall," he suggested. "Block off the sensitive information without deleting it, just keep it up but close it off."

"It'll be too obvious," she disagreed. "We'll have to do better than that. If we set up a wall, it will be obvious that we're trying to keep something hidden. And this is the government – they've got hackers like us on retainer by the hundreds, I bet. No, we have to make a decoy loop."

"I've never done one of those," Spinelli admitted. "I can make airtight encryption walls, but my decoy loops always have cracks that I can't spot."

"You find the information on our servers and close it off, I'll make the decoy loop and transfer it," Elizabeth instructed, opening up her coding application. "We'll set it up simultaneously – poof. No more incriminating evidence."

He nodded and got to work. "Did you email Stone Cold?"

"Not yet," she said. "I figure we'll just scare them. You know how they get with computer stuff. If they hear the government's tracking down their files, they'll fly back and have closed-door meetings with Alexis and move money around and they might as well just put up a big neon arrow that says "I'm With Felon" or something. No, I figure we'll do what we can and then let them in on it. At least that way, we can kind of maintain some control over the situation."

They worked frantically and in silence for the next fifteen minutes with Sonny's Puerto Rican music blaring over the speakers. When Elizabeth was done, she waited for Spinelli to set it all up together and execute it, and the files were safely hidden.

He let out a huge sigh of relief and slumped back in his seat. "Okay, one down…God knows how many left to go."

"Big picture, big picture," Elizabeth was muttering to herself. "Okay, so we hid incriminating files. That's part of it, right? We know they're watching us, we're not being suspicious, and we hid incriminating files. What's next…Oh! Cayman island accounts."

"We'll have to do something with that money," Spinelli agreed. "That's simple, we can handle that. The hard part will be doing it and making the money disappear without them finding out. It's not like just doing a surveillance check under the radar – that's individual work. To withdraw all that money – hundreds of millions of dollars per account – man, it's going to be much harder."

"Not only getting the money out, but doing something with it," Elizabeth added. "It's not like we can stuff it in the pockets of our trench coats and walk on out with it. We're going to have to do something with it – donate it, hide it, spend it, invest it – immediately so that it gets burned up. Keeping all that money hidden even for a little bit, with what we're looking at right now…"

"But that's all that's left," he pointed out. "That's the last hurdle we have to jump. …Right?"

"Not even," she grimaced. "What do you think is going to happen when they find out that all the money's gone? Obviously, they know that there are offshore accounts. And that those accounts will be pretty easy to find after they're done making sure that all the basics are solid. When they look for those accounts and it turns out that all the money Sonny and Jason make, they report and pay taxes on, what do you think the Feds are going to do? Come after us."

"Us?" Spinelli squeaked. "But we don't know anything."

Elizabeth spared him a bland look. "If we don't know anything, why are we playing really loud music and staying off our cell phones and setting up encryption walls? We know everything! We might even know more than Sonny and Jason, especially about where things are."

"We picked the wrong presidency to get involved in this," Spinelli muttered, turning back to his computer. "I don't want the next time I log onto the internets to be from Guantanamo Bay, all right?"

"We'll figure it out," Elizabeth muttered, clicking away on her own computer. "Baby steps, right? Baby steps until we've worked out the big picture. First…we get rid of the money. Somehow. Then…we get the hell on out of here."


	56. Chapter 56

**Hack | 56**

**.: Harborview Towers, Parking Garage :.**

"You're sure you got all of it, right?" Spinelli looked over his shoulder as he darted through rows of cars, careful to keep his head down. "Every last cent? And you wiped out all of the accounts, right?"

"Of course I did!" she yelped, frantically clutching her purse, backpack, computer bag, and passport to her chest as they ran. "Go, go, go!"

"I don't know where to go," he hissed. "Who did you say was picking us up?"

"It doesn't matter," she whispered back, grabbing his collar and yanking him down so that they were hidden between two Audis. "Just keep your voice down. Look."

He followed her finger, peering through the back windows of one of the cars. The garage attendant had just raised the bar and two black sedans with tinted windows pulled in. They kept their heads down and watched the two cars pull into the handicap spots right by the doors. Four men got out, two from each car, and did a visual sweep of the rest of the lot.

Spinelli scooted behind one tire as Elizabeth scooted behind another, careful to keep all their bags together, so that their feet couldn't be seen under the car. After a minute, the men moved to the door and vanished inside.

"You were right," Spinelli breathed, crawling along after her as she edged away toward the service door where all the deliveries were made. "They came for us. They want to know what we know."

"They might have come to question the staff at the Towers, too," she whispered back. "You know, ask them about Sonny and Jason's schedule, the men on their payroll that come in and out, surveillance, all that stuff. God, I hope so. It'll buy us some time."

"How do you plan on getting us out of here?" he wanted to know. "The Feds are inside, they're at the Metrocourt, too, and you can bet they've got all exits scoped out. We're surrounded."

"We'll be just fine as long as we can get to that truck," Elizabeth said, pointing to the _Southern Wine & Spirits of America Co. _truck parked by the service door. It was the one that frequently dropped off fine malts for the Harborview restaurant as well as some of the residents. "Come on. We can do it."

"Stay close to the ground and in the shadows," Spinelli recited, remembering what Jason taught him. "All right, ready."

"Move." Elizabeth looked around one last time and made a break for it with Spinelli hard on her heels. The back door was open and they headed straight for it. Spinelli got in first and dumped his stuff in his lap, then reached out and grabbed Elizabeth's hand in both of his, pulling her in.

"Someone's coming," he hissed, pulling her into the shadows. The bottles clinked around them and he winced, instinctively putting an arm in front of her like Jason used to put in front of him to shield him when they found themselves in a dangerous situation. "Shoot, they heard us."

"Yup, that looks to be the last of it," came a deep voice that made Elizabeth smile, and they heard the delivery manager for the Towers call out goodbye. "Got enough liquor there to keep the place soaked til next week. Time to close her on up and finish the route."

The deliveryman appeared in the door of the cab, and Spinelli gasped and Elizabeth grinned when they saw that it was Coleman dressed in a brown uniform with a cap pulled low over his eyes. He winked at them and grabbed the doors, preparing to close them.

"Yup, time to head on out for the night."

The doors slammed shut, leaving them in the darkness, and Elizabeth quickly pulled out her mp3 player and spun the dial. A blue light glowed strong, lighting up the back of the cab, and Spinelli's mouth still hung open.

"That was Coleman."

"Yup," she replied proudly. "Set that up while you were rerouting all the money to our accounts. He knew to get here and get us out, no sweat."

"Won't it be a little suspicious? I mean, the _Southern Wine and whatever company_?"

Elizabeth shook her head. "Nope. It just bought out Premier, one of the largest distributors here in New York, last week. Coleman used Premier to keep Jake's stocked, so he has an in. My guess? The normal deliveryman is probably passed out upstairs at Jake's with a bottle of phenomenal single-malt and when he wakes up tomorrow morning, he won't notice the extra hundred miles on the odometer."

"Home free," Spinelli grinned, stretching out among the crates. "Or something like it. As soon as we get out of New York."

"And then it's a flight down to Miami and a charter to Port-au-Prince," Elizabeth filled in. "Then it's an overnight stay there and the next morning? The Dominican."

"Where all we do is sit back on the beach, drink sweet things out of coconuts, and spend obscene amounts of money," he chortled, letting her rest her head on his shoulder as the truck pulled out of the Harborview garage. "Man, the glamorous life of hackers, huh?"

"You said it."

~*~*~*~*~*~

**.: Stone Creek Air Field :.**

"Finally," Sonny sighed as the plane taxied down the runway of the private air field they used. They'd been so incredibly exhausted after the business trip to Costa Rica that both he and Jason had slept the whole way back. "New York, New York."

Jason yawned and ran a hand through his hair, buckling in for the landing at their pilot's insistence. He wanted to check his phone but knew that Bill frowned on that during take off and landing, and he generally did whatever the pilot said. He was a nice guy, very reliable, and Jason liked to be courteous back.

"Hope everything's okay back home," he murmured.

"I'm sure it is," Sonny replied. "It's just Spinelli and Elizabeth. Plus, Ritchie's around, and a couple of the other guards. How much trouble could they possibly have gotten into?"

"We've never left them alone for almost two weeks," Jason pointed out. "We said we'd be gone one week but it took longer, and we didn't even get word back to them. I just don't want to drive up to Harborview Towers and found out that…I don't know…they burned it down to the ground with their Afternoon Dee-lite."

"Afternoon Dee-lite," Sonny murmured. "That has a slowing effect on…people, right?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sure they're fine," the mobster repeated after a pause. "They're grown kids. They're trustworthy…for the most part. They're reliable…for the most part. They're mature…"

"Not at all," Jason finished with a frown. "And left by themselves? Jesus, we're going to find police tape and a chalk outline when we get home…"

"Who do you think is more likely to kill whom?" Sonny asked with a grin.

"…My money's on Elizabeth killing Spinelli," Jason grimaced.

"Yeah, me, too."

"Kid needs to bulk up. He'd have a chance then."

"Probably."

They sat in silence as the plane touched down, and only undid their seatbelts when Bill hit the button. The guards grabbed the bags, the tarmac was set up, and Sonny and Jason began to exit the plane.

"Max, Milo, got everything?"

They nodded and Jason followed along behind them. "Yeah, Boss, everything's set. Let's just get home. Maybe we can catch Elizabeth and the kid for dinner or something. They eat pretty late."

The brothers resumed chatting as they walked down the stairs, and Jason turned around and waited for Sonny. He was checking his phone and frowned at the missed calls.

"What's up?"

He held up the phone for Jason to see. "Fifteen missed calls from Stan, ten from Ritchie. What the hell?"

Jason stopped, the most uneasy feeling settling low in his stomach. "Check your voicemail."

Sonny was still fumbling with his phone. "God, I barely know how to work this thing half the time…Okay, here we go. Uh…"

He listened to the message and first looked confused, then furious. By the time he hung up, Jason was ready to assume the worst.

"What the hell is it?"

"The Feds," Sonny got out, his words clipped and terse. "The fucking Feds. He couldn't say much – he's probably already cleaned his own phone if it was bugged, but he has no way of knowing if they got to mine – but he dropped the code. The Feds are in town. Or they were in town. I don't know, we have to get back to the Towers immediately."

~*~*~*~*~*~

**.: Harborview Towers :.**

"What the _hell _is going on here?!"

Stan stood up so fast that he almost caused a large potted plant to fall over. "Boss, you're home. We're – we're doing a last sweep of the place, making sure that nothing's left behind. No bugs, no wires-"

"I want to know everything," Sonny barked, motioning for Ritchie and Stan to come forward. "The rest of you can get out if the penthouse is clean."

The junior guards scattered and Sonny and Jason stood by the door, awaiting the story. Stan looked nervously at Ritchie and when it was clear that Ritchie was keeping his mouth shut, began talking.

"We were on assignment, as planned," he started. "We took care of everything, cleaned up after ourselves, and make sure the trail was cold. Then we got back to the town and…well…the Feds were everywhere. They had warrants to search your penthouse and your offices and the country estate, and everything was up in the air."

"We did our best to stay one step ahead of them," Ritchie picked up, taking pity on his friend. "There wasn't anything we could do about the penthouse, but we got all the sensitive information from your offices before they got there, and from the Greystone, and we hid it in the underground bunkers along the docks. Then we went to the warehouses and did the same thing there and made sure all the shipments were rerouted until it was safe to move them again."

"What did they get?" Sonny wanted to know as Jason folded his arms. "What happened?"

"They didn't get anything important," Ritchie assured them, and the two men let out a sigh of relief. "Your important papers and surveillance photos and everything like that is safe under the docks. They got some financial statements and some evidence about your dealings with Silvestro in the city, but nothing too damaging, thank God."

"You'll have to be on your best behavior for a while, but, other than that…no one's going to be able to put you away based on what happened this week," Stan said.

Sonny looked at Jason, the first sign of his dimples showing as he began to smile. "Well, that's good news. That's great news. I can lay low for a while – a few months, a year, no problem. We'll be careful. What the hell did you guys look so scared for?"

Stan and Ritchie looked at each other. "Well…"

Jason looked back and forth between them. "Guys? What aren't you saying?"

Stan cleared his throat. "Well, there's really something you should see. I…I've been working on it for days, I really have, and hopefully you can give me the answers and this is all just some stupid misunderstanding on my part and you planned it all along and we can all laugh at it…"

He was rambling and stopped himself, pointing to a file on the table. "I'll just go get it."

Sonny nodded and waited for him to bring it over, looking around the penthouse. "Hey, by the way, where are Spinelli and Elizabeth?"

"Actually…" Stan handed the stapled papers to him and backed away nervously. "That's kind of related."

"What are you talking about?" Sonny laughed. "Where are the kids?"

He looked down at the papers then and stopped, as if he couldn't believe it, then flipped all the way to the back, then back to the first page.

"And where the HELL is my money?!"


	57. Chapter 57

**Hack | 57**

**.: Punta Cana, Dominican Republic :.**

"You any good at golf?"

Elizabeth shook her head. "Nope. Sonny tried to teach me, but it didn't work out well. You ever notice that Ritchie limps slightly when it's about to rain? Yeah, there's a reason for that. You?"

Spinelli shrugged. "Never had a chance, really. I think Stone Cold can golf. Or used to golf. Or something. Sometimes, when he's frustrated or thinking or when his shoulders are bothering him, he stands like he's holding a club and swings. You've never noticed?"

"He doesn't do it around me," she replied easily, handing him her drink so that she could readjust her sarong around her narrow hips. Spinelli padded along next to her, his brown leather flip-flops sending up small clouds of dust on the dirt pathway. "Besides, there are probably tons of things that you know about him that I don't."

He puffed his chest out a little at that, pleased to have a few things on the Dragon. "Yeah, I guess there are. After all, me and the Stone Cold have been together for years."

"Yes, I'm sure it's a proud day for you and your family," she replied dryly, taking her drink from him. She finished it in a long slurp as they continued walking to the ocean and then let out a happy cry. "Oh, look! Spinelli, look! Are those – dolphins? In the lagoon?"

He squinted and then started hopping up and down. "Yes! Yes, they are! Looks like that part's owned by the hotel – they've probably got them there for the guests. Come on, let's see if we can go swim with them."

He grabbed her hand and they took off, running down the pathway to the lagoon.

~*~*~*~*~

"Oh, my God, best vacation ever," Spinelli got out as he and Elizabeth collapsed on the sand in the shade under a leafy tree. "What are we doing next?"

"I have no idea," she said, "we've got the rest of the day free and more money than we'll ever be able to spend. Plus, we don't have to worry about anything back home. We can stay here as long as we want, really. Things back home…"

"It'll be fine," he agreed, "Mister Corinthos Sir and Stone Cold will understand. They know how it is. When you have that much money and that many people after you…well, you can't trust anyone. And you take your own risks, you know?"

"Definitely," she agreed. "Okay…when we can breathe again…seriously, what do you want to do?"

"Well…" He lay back on the sand and folded his hands over his stomach. "We just hiked up the Playa Bavaro dunes…and ran all the way down…so…wanna eat?"

"La Bandera Dominicana," Elizabeth cheered, referring to the meal served daily throughout the resort. "Okay. We'll do that. As soon as we can get up."

"As soon as we can get up," Spinelli agreed. He stretched his arm out to his side so that she could rest her head on it, and they looked out at the ocean. "Nice here."

"Oh, yeah."

"…We should have done this a _long_ time ago."

"Oh, yeah."

They lay together in silence for a long time until Spinelli turned and looked at her. "You don't think they're mad, do you? Stone Cold and Mister Corinthos Sir?"

"Oh, of course they're mad. They're probably _really _mad."

"Yeah," he agreed with a sigh. "Oh, well, they should have seen this coming, anyhow."

Elizabeth nodded in agreement. "And besides – we totally deserve this. After how we busted our asses for them? You for Jason and me for Sonny, and then the both of us for both of them. We totally deserve this!"

"We are, after all, awesome."

"Oh, we are. And so sneaky."

"So very sneaky," he agreed. "Who else could have gotten rid of all that money so fast? And high-tailed it out of the country all spur of the moment like that?"

"Clearly, we rock."

"Clearly, we do."

"And clearly, they never saw it coming."

Spinelli laughed. "Almost enough to make you feel sorry for them, isn't it?"

Elizabeth wrinkled her nose and looked at him. "Nah."

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Why are the waiters giving us weird looks?"

Elizabeth arched a brow at him. "Because we're sitting at a table overlooking the ocean in the best restaurant in the entire resort with coconut drinks…and we're both on our laptops. That's why."

Spinelli frowned and caressed his computer. "But Princess Peach is a guest of honor. How dare they."

"Eh."

He glanced up at her. "Did you get anything yet?"

"Nope, no reply."

"Ah, well." Spinelli scratched the back of his head and requested another drink from their waiter. "It's probably just as well."

"What do you mean?"

"Well…I really like it here." He shrugged awkwardly. "With you."

Elizabeth considered this. "Yeah, I guess you're not that bad as a traveling companion. Still, I'd rather be here with Jason."

"Well, that's a no-brainer."

She crinkled her nose and frowned at him. "What is it with you? I always think we're doing fine and then you start acting like a little bitch. Seriously, nerd, not cool."

He shot her an exasperated, heavy-lidded look. "Oh, don't pretend that you don't know what's going on. Or what…would have been going on. I don't know. Stuff."

"What are you _talking_ about?! God, it's like I never know with you!"

"Stone Cold and Mister Corinthos Sir," he burst out. "It's always gonna be you as far as they're concerned. All this contest stuff – you won, anyway, before we even left. They were going to keep you on and I'd be shown the door and I'd have to fend for myself and I get that none of that is your fault, but still, you make it so easy to blame you because you suck."

Elizabeth just stared at him. "Spinelli-"

"And I get that you and Stone Cold and Mister Corinthos Sir and the Silent Sentinels are the perfect little family and all that, but it just sucks because Stone Cold was the only family I ever liked or even had on any sort of consistent basis," he continued, the words tumbling out rapidly, "and you're good at everything that I'm good at and on top of all that, you took him, too. And that just sucks."

"I wasn't trying to take him from you," she said when he paused for a breath. "Really. Not like that. I just…liked him? I think? I don't know. It just sort of happened. It's never been like that for me. Ever. I don't know if you know this, but I'm pretty stunted when it comes to relationships. With anyone."

Spinelli opened his mouth, and then shut it. It was really just too easy, and taking advantage of that would have been unsportsmanlike.

"And with Jason…" She shook her head. "I don't know, sometimes I'm amazed that he's still around. That he wants to be around. He's so much different than I am – he's stable and consistent and dependable and…normal, you know? Well, that's probably not the right word for him, but he's more normal than the rest of us. And I just...like having him around. I think. Even though he snores. Did you know he snores?"

"Like a buzzsaw," Spinelli replied.

"Look, all I'm saying is that I didn't set out to get him just because you had him," Elizabeth said plainly. "I wasn't trying to steal him from you, it just happened. And hey, you and Sonny are a lot closer now than you used to be, and I never once felt like you were trying to steal him from me."

"That's because I couldn't," he pointed out. "Mister Corinthos Sir _chose_ you. He just tolerates you."

She took a sip of her drink and shook her head. "I don't think you give yourself enough credit."

"What do you mean?"

"For one thing, Sonny doesn't just tolerate anyone." She smiled at the waiter when he set her dessert down in front of her. "If he doesn't like someone or doesn't care about them, he gets rid of them. Either he shoots them or he ignores them or he transfers them, anything so that he doesn't have to deal with them. He likes you, he really does. He likes taking care of people, that's what his thing is, which I realize is totally ironic, but he likes taking care of people and you…you need to be taken care of."

"Gee, thanks."

"What? You're, like, a walking disaster."

"If you go on, I'll think you're coming onto me."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean. And I don't care what you say, there is no way in hell that either of them would have ever tossed you out and let you fend for yourself. Not ever. I can't believe you'd even think that."

"They have every reason to," he protested. "In Italy, it was different. Stone Cold needed me. I helped him out, so he kept me around. He was like the Doctor and I was his companion."

"Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, or Donna Noble?"

"Rose Tyler, definitely."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes again. "The Doctor's greatest love? Oh, that explains _so_ much, nerd, you have no idea."

"Whatever, Billie Piper is amazing."

"She's had, like, three babies."

"That makes no difference," he said stubbornly. "Stone Cold and I were like the Doctor and Rose Tyler. Here, it's different. He's home. He has Mister Corinthos Sir and he has you. You're both around to help him. He doesn't need me now, and he doesn't have any real reason to keep me around."

Spinelli sighed glumly and stirred his drink with his straw. "He really should kick me to the curb. It'd be for the best."

"For who?" Elizabeth snorted. "For Jason? You're kidding, right? He needs you around."

"Yeah? Name one reason why."

"Because keeping you around makes him feel like he's not weird." She gestured with her drink in her hand, spilling just a little on the table cloth. "I mean, think about it. Seven-year-old brain damaged mob enforcer cum prodigal son of the most respected family in town? Jason's a one-man freak show. Keeping you around makes him feel like he's normal."

Spinelli wasn't amused. "I'm sure that would make a lovely Valentine's Day card."

"Fine, fine, all joking aside…" It was hard for her to be serious with the little nerd, but she made a valiant effort. "He wants you around because you're his friend. You give him that."

"And you give him sex."

She threw her hands in the air. "Will you give it up? It's not a competition!"

"Well, not anymore! I can't compete with sex! I've never even had any!"

He clapped his hand over his mouth as soon as the words were out, but it was too late: Elizabeth was staring at him in shock. She gripped the edge of the table and leaned forward, her voice dropping to a scandalized whisper.

"You mean, you're still a virgin?"

Spinelli glared at her.

"Oh, boy," Elizabeth murmured, sitting back in her seat. "Jason failed you, didn't he?"

For some reason, that struck him as ridiculously funny and Spinelli burst out laughing. Elizabeth laughed along, absently swirling her drink in her glass.

"Don't worry, we'll get that taken care of in Punta Cana," she teased. "That's what vacation's for, right? We'll find you a nerdy island girl."

"Shut up."

"I meant what I said earlier, though," she said, still smiling. "You're Jason's friend. I'm…kind of something more than a friend. And for once, it's not a competition between us."

Spinelli looked up at her cautiously. "You mean that?"

"I do."

He held out his drink hesitantly, and she clacked her glass with his. "I can deal with that."

"Well, that's a start."


	58. Chapter 58

**Hack | 58**

**.: Punta Cana, Dominican Republic :.**

"So it's really not a competition between you and me, huh?"

She wrapped her sarong around her waist as they headed out into the warm evening. The sun hung low in the sky and they thought they'd head up to the dunes for the tropical sunset.

"Not as far as Jason is concerned. And not as far as the challenges are concerned, either, since I equalized your nerd butt."

He rolled his eyes and shoved his hands into the pockets of his plaid shorts (that he insisted on wearing with a Hawaiian shirt, making him a walking eyesore), and Elizabeth realized with a start that she almost felt…bad.

"Although I have to admit, we worked pretty well together there for a bit," she said, elbowing him as they headed down the dirt path away from their adjoining suites. "Like when we thought the Feds would find the money and we took it all and ran away. That was some exemplary teamwork, Jackal."

He grinned at her use of his nickname and nodded. "It surely was…Elizabeth."

"I'd love to have been a fly on the wall of that Metrocourt room," she laughed. "I mean, can you imagine? They must have thought they had it in the bag. And then all of a sudden, the bag's missing. There is no bag. The bag went to us, and it was our bag."

"Ha," Spinelli laughed, "they must have been so mad. Trained federal agents, and they were outsmarted by the two of us."

"Only because we're the best hackers ever," she grinned, holding her hand up for a high-five that he obliged. "And we're actually even better when we work together."

"I think I've figured out why," he mused as they headed off the path and onto the sand that would lead them eventually to the gorgeous beach. "You're good at the big picture. I don't know if you noticed, but you even kept saying 'big picture, big picture,' when we were working. Like you were reminding yourself not to forget anything. And you didn't. You remember the stuff that I would have forgotten, that would have screwed us over in the end. I'm just good at the nitty-gritty details of the code, that's all."

"They say God's in the details."

"You don't believe in God."

"No, but I think it's still a pretty idea." She plodded along lazily with him at her side, enjoying the feeling of the warm breeze in her hair and against the bare skin left exposed by the cute little bikini she'd bought (with cash) before leaving the United States. "Your codes are iron-clad. You've seen mine – I have little holes in them sometimes. I can get it if I really concentrate, if I really bust my balls and work at it, like when Jason was in prison and I hid out in my bunker and just coded for days straight. But you've seen me, it takes me forever. The time I spend working on a really solid, airtight code, you get the same code written in like a third of the time. And then you debug, which is why your codes are even _better_ after that."

"Debugging is, like, twice as hard as writing the code," Spinelli said. "I hate it so much. And you know what the worst part is? If you write a code as cleverly as you possibly can, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."

Elizabeth had to laugh at that. "That's…actually incredibly true."

"It's why I use a little trick," he added, shrugging when she looked at him. "Documentation. Sometimes I write it in a text document, sometimes I record it in mp3 format on the computer while I'm writing the code. Documentation really helps me go back and figure out what I was doing, what I was thinking, and it makes it easier to think of user errors and where the other bugs might be."

"See, for me, documentation is like sex."

"Explain."

She smirked as they began climbing the dune that would lead them to a startling view of the sun setting over the ocean. "When it's good, it's amazing and there's nothing better. When it's bad, it's better than nothing."

Spinelli grinned and grabbed her hand when she stumbled. "For the inexperienced, I guess. Not that you're inexperienced."

"Definitely not. Just not as fast when it comes to the details of code."

"I only am because coding was my only friend growing up," he admitted. "I didn't get along so good with the other kids. I was always too different, so it was easier just to sit with my computer and write program codes. I've been doing it for years and that's how I'm so fast. It's kind of pathetic."

"Not pathetic," she disagreed. "Mozart didn't get to where he was by ditching his piano lessons and playing kickball instead. You were a child prodigy. Me…it was just something I came into by accident. From what my grandparents told me, I don't think I was big into computers before I got shot. It was just something that I found out I was good at later."

"Like an idiot savant," he said before realizing she might not take it as a compliment. "You were just able to access a part of your brain in a way that you couldn't before, that's all. I don't think you can say that either way is better. They're just different. You look at the big picture and make sure everything comes together and I just look at the small pieces and make sure they're flawless."

"Yeah," Elizabeth agreed. "You know, we really do work better together than we do apart."

"Yes, but you won the challenges, and I can respect that," he said, bowing graciously. "Took me a while to get there, but I can accept that."

"Why, thank you. That feels damn good, I'm not gonna lie."

"Yes, the Jackal has been vanquished by the fire-breathing Dragon…and he's okay with that. Kind of. Maybe. A little. Sorta."

"Better than nothing," she shrugged. "You starting to believe me when I tell you that you're not going to be kicked out on your butt?"

"…I don't want to talk about it."

"Spinelli!" She would have shoved him, but the hill was surprisingly steep. "I'm telling you, you're going to stay with us until you're old and gray. You just are. That's the way it is."

"How can you be so sure?" he asked, and she could tell he meant it sincerely. "I mean, you're always so sure. How do you know?"

"Because you're family," Elizabeth shrugged, shrugging again when he balked at her. "What? You are. You've been Jason's family for a while now. He definitely talks about you like you're family. When your birthday was coming up, he was actually stressing about what to get you since he couldn't figure anything out."

His eyes widened and his fingers unconsciously flew to the engraved silver dog tag he always wore. "Really?"

"Yup, totally couldn't get him to shut up about it," she affirmed. "And sometimes, if he's in the right mood, he'll talk about the stuff you two did in Italy. He talks about you like you're family. And take Sonny."

"He really didn't like me in the beginning."

"He didn't like you for the same reason you don't really like me," Elizabeth said. "Because you just showed up all of a sudden, and Jason trusted you and he relied on you and for the longest time, the only person that Jason trusted and relied on was Sonny. Since after the accident, really. But there you were. And he got over it. He cooks for you now, and he makes things that you like and he always wants to know that you're taken care of. Trust me, there's no better way of knowing that Sonny likes you and considers you part of the family."

"Really?" He still didn't sound fully convinced, but seemed to be getting there. "That's how it is with him?"

"That's how it is with him," she nodded. They'd reached the top of the dune and now stood there, gazing out at the open waters and the sun as it began to set. "If he wants to take care of you, it means that he thinks of you like family. It's really that simple."

"Oh." Spinelli looked out across the ocean, then glanced hesitantly at her. "And for the record…I don't not like you. You're okay, I guess."

"Yeah."

That awkward bit of business squared away, he let out a contented sigh and watched the sailboats in the distance.

"So…we're, like, cool, right?"

"…We're young, we're incredibly brainy, we're in one of the most beautiful resorts in the world, and we have a crapload of money to burn through." He turned to her and smirked. "Yeah, I'd say we're cool."

Elizabeth grinned back. "Great. Now I can go back to torturing Ritchie instead of you and all will be right with the world."

"You know, it's so peaceful here," Spinelli continued, tiling his head to catch the breeze through his hair. "So warm and quiet and lazy…we can do whatever we want, whenever we want. We can have ice cream and cocktails for breakfast. We can drink things out of fruits. We can swim with dolphins and build sandcastles at midnight. No one here to order us around or hassle us or tell us to eat healthy or get mad at us…"

"THERE THEY ARE."

Elizabeth and Spinelli whirled around, almost losing their footing, and saw Max, Milo, Sonny, and Jason, all of them incredibly irate, storming down the trail leading up from the hotel.

Spinelli gritted his teeth as Elizabeth gulped. "…Oh, crap."


	59. Chapter 59

**Hack | 59**

**.: Punta Cana, Dominican Republic :.**

"THERE THEY ARE."

Sonny Corinthos growled and headed in the direction Jason was pointing. He could see Spinelli and Elizabeth standing there on the dunes, looking perfectly at ease and as if they hadn't just stolen billions of dollars from multiple off-shore accounts. Elizabeth wore a pink bikini with some sort of floral-printed wrap around her waist and Spinelli was wearing plaid shorts with a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt. Someone should have stopped and told the kid that he'd fled to the Dominican, not the Hawaiian Islands.

They looked scared, as they should have been, and Max and Milo moved forward quickly as if they expected the two of them to grab a palm leaf and toboggan down the side of the dune or something dramatic like that.

Finding themselves cornered, Spinelli and Elizabeth looked at each other and then at Sonny and Jason.

Elizabeth blinked. "…What's up, guys?"

Sonny wasn't amused. He rolled forward slowly, deliberately, with all the predatory grace of a panther moving in for the kill. Jason, solid and stoic as always, backed him up. "Why don't you tell me? Why don't you tell me _why_ I came home after a week and a half away to find my business in chaos, my men scrambling, my point man clueless, you two missing, and my _money vanished_?"

Spinelli and Elizabeth just stared at him. "…Are you serious?"

"What are you talking about?" Jason burst out. "Of course he's fucking serious!"

"Stone Cold, there's no need to get salty," Spinelli said, trying to calm his mentor down. "Really, we were just…"

"We got home and everything was missing," Jason hissed. "You guys. The money. We had no fucking idea what happened or where you went and that is _unacceptable_, you got me? Now you two better start talking. Now."

Elizabeth and Spinelli's jaws dropped and their expressions became indignant, and the two put their hands on their hips in almost comic alacrity.

"What do you _mean_ we better start talking?" Elizabeth cried.

"Where the hell do you get off, Stone Cold?" Spinelli yelled at the same time, surprising everyone there but Elizabeth.

"God!" Elizabeth curled her hands into fists and glared at the two men. "Honestly, I don't know what the hell your problem is – either of you!"

"We work and we work and we work," Spinelli continued, jabbing his finger at them, "and does it make any difference?"

"No!" she burst out. "We might as well be beating our heads against a rock!"

Sonny was flabbergasted and vainly tried to regain control of the situation. "Now, wait here, you two disappeared with our money and didn't leave us with any information."

"Argh!!" Clearly, Elizabeth wasn't pleased. "GOD! How did we ever get stuck with you two?"

"Did you check your email?" Spinelli demanded, looking back and forth between the two men. "Huh? Did you ever _once_ check your email between the time you came home and now? Hm?"

"You know, the freaking emails we set up just for you and spent _months_ trying to teach you how to use?"

"The email account you used to email the Dragon almost a week ago?" Spinelli added, scowling more when Jason's eyes widened in realization. "The one you used just a few hours before all hell broke loose back home? The one that we reasonably believed that you were starting to check regularly after how many freaking months of us telling you that you should? Yeah, _that_ one. The one that we took such great pains to set up for you-"

"And you," Elizabeth said, jabbing an accusing finger at Sonny, "although I don't know why we bothered, if you two were going to be such lazeholes about it."

"It's really too much to handle sometimes," he added with a growl. "I mean, we can take the abuse and we can take the fact that half the time, you have no idea what language we're speaking. But when we set up things for you and try to teach you things, the least you can do is acknowledge that we're doing it for your benefit and that maybe, just maybe, those things are important."

"And if you'd ever _once_ bothered to check instead of storming around the world and getting your boxers in a twist, you would have known everything," Elizabeth said, throwing her hands in the air. She jerked her sarong into an even tighter knot at her waist and stormed past them.

"Come on, nerd, somewhere there's a coconut filled with rum and pineapple juice with our names on it."

"Yeah," he agreed, having the audacity to glare at a stunned Jason as he passed. "It'll help us cope with having to deal with you two. God."

All four men turned and watched the two stomp away down the dirt path leading back to their hotel rooms, and no one spoke until Max planted his hands on his hips and broke the silence.

"Okay, what the fuck just happened?"

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Elizabeth…"

She batted his wandering hands away and twisted in her seat as the lights turned on around the outdoor recreation area. "No. I'm not talking to you. Go be stupid somewhere else."

Jason sighed gruffly and turned to his young sidekick. "Spinelli, you-"

He tipped his nose in the air and twisted away to face the same direction Elizabeth was, choosing instead to pointedly watch the outdoor floor show as he sipped his drink. "Peddle it elsewhere, Stone Cold, the Jackal is _not_ interested."

Jason sighed again and rolled back onto his haunches, pushing himself up to his feet. He turned to Sonny with a shrug. "I tried."

"That was you trying?" his best friend asked, rolling his eyes. "Move."

Sonny cleared his throat and crouched on his knees, very gently turning Elizabeth's chair around so that she faced him. "Sweetheart, listen, I know how hard you've always worked to-"

"Not buying it. And let go of my chair."

She turned her back on him and he turned helplessly toward her cohort. "Look, Spinelli, even though we didn't get off to the best start, you know how much I love having you around and how much I value your-"

"Clearly you don't value my input," he interrupted breezily, pausing to take a loud slurp of his drink, "because otherwise, you would have checked the email account I set up for you and hounded you about for months. We'll see how you like being ignored, Mister Corinthos…Sir."

Sonny growled under his breath and straightened, earning a bland look from Jason. "Oh, shut up, what do you know? They're mad at you, too."

Max and Milo arched their brows in almost comic alacrity when they turned around to look at them and silently ask their help. "Hey, don't look at us. We're actually kind of on their side."

"I hate computers," Max added, earning a pained look from Spinelli, "but even _I_ check my Gmail every day."

"You have a Gmail?" Milo asked, sounding almost betrayed. "I thought you still used your Yahoo."

"Naw, man, it's like the worst provider. My messages either got eaten coming in or going out. Plus, the megabyte limit was ridiculous."

"Fuck, man, I've been sending you forwards to that Yahoo account for weeks now. You could have told me. I bet you didn't even _see_ the one with the monkeys having sex."

Sonny's eyes narrowed as he watched them argue. "…Who _are_ you two?"

"That notwithstanding," Max said, solidly folding his arms over his chest, "we're with them. Checking your email should be a part of your daily routine, Boss. These are different times."

Jason rolled his eyes. "Oh, for Christ's sake…"

"You can ignore it if you want to," Milo piped up, "but that doesn't mean it'll go away. This is how the world works now."

"Why don't you two…go over there or something?" Sonny suggested. "Go get a drink and enjoy the floor show. Operative word being, go."

The brothers shrugged and wandered over to the outdoor bar to do just that, and Spinelli and Elizabeth eyed the two mobsters icily as they approached once more.

"Look, we're not going away, so you can stop looking at us like that," Sonny told them. "Yes, we probably should have checked our emails. Fine, I'll give you that. But it's hard for me to log on and do all that stuff-"

Spinelli snorted. "You're just making excuses. And not even good ones."

"And besides, I bookmarked the login page for you," Elizabeth said. "You just had to find it in the menu and click to be able to access it, but you couldn't even do that. And you, don't you even start with me."

Jason held up his hands. "What did I do?"

"Every time I tried to show you how to log on, you distracted me with me kisses," she said accusingly, causing Spinelli to pull a face. "No more kisses."

"Look, try to look at this from our point of view," Sonny tried after sparing Jason an irritated look. "We come home after an extended trip, expecting to find the two of you waiting for us and everything in order, and instead half our men are missing, we find out about a close call with the Feds, the business is all disorganized, and our money is completely gone. Just _try_ to see it that way."

"And we need that money," Jason pointed out. "If we had to rely on the money we made honestly, it'd slow the business down completely. We need that easy money on hand, around the clock. So when we found out that it was all gone…"

"You thought we stole it," Elizabeth finished, arching a brow in challenge. "You thought that Spinelli and I took all the money, cut our losses and ran away."

"Well, that was what we thought at first," Sonny tried to clarify. "But only for a second. We knew something else had to be going on, that you two wouldn't have done that."

"But you still thought we stole it," Spinelli persisted, getting a pleading look from Jason. "You thought we amscrayed with the loot."

"What were we supposed to think?" Sonny burst out. "All that money – gone! You two – gone! And when we found out you were here, in the nicest resort in this part of the world, yeah, we wondered how you were paying for it."

"Stone Cold has been giving me a stipend since we came home," Spinelli pointed out. "And since he takes care of all my expenses and my room and board are free, it's all just sitting there, collecting interest. Obviously, that's what I'd use if I wanted to spend money on myself."

"And you've been paying me for years," Elizabeth added, looking at Sonny. "Allowance, plus money for all the work I do for you. And yeah, I shop a lot, but I don't have to pay rent, so most of that money sits there, too. We figured that the Feds already got a look at our trust funds – well, _my_ trust fund – and all that, so we might as well drain our individual accounts so they couldn't look too far into that. We diverted all that money and used it to get us here."

"And as soon as that was all set and we were out of Port Charles on our way to Miami," Spinelli picked up, "we wrote out a whole long email to each of you giving you all the access numbers and locations of the temporary accounts we created for everything. We gave you _every last detail_. If you'd ever once just logged on, you'd have seen that every last cent was accounted for and that we didn't screw anything up."

"We did good work," she insisted as Spinelli nodded along. "We _owned_ what could have been a real crisis. We really saved your asses and instead, you tracked us down because you think we stole from you."

"We wanted to know where you were," Sonny defended lamely. "You two just disappeared with no word…"

"Again, if you had read the email, you would have known that we were taking a long vacation," Spinelli said. "We said we didn't know when we'd get back, but we were taking it easy and laying low for a bit and if you needed anything, you could email us because we'd already gotten rid of our phones because they were probably being tracked or something, despite all our precautions."

"Okay, look, we get it," Jason cut in, "we messed up. And we're…sorry."

"That sounded so heartfelt," Elizabeth feigned.

Her boyfriend snarled under his breath. "What do you want from us?"

"We want groveling!" Spinelli demanded fiercely, earning a few alarmed looks from the other resort patrons. When Jason glowered ferociously at him, he cleared his throat nervously. "…But we'll settle for being left to enjoy our vacation for another week or two. And you two can't jerk us around anymore."

"Yeah," Elizabeth agreed. "We've been working our asses off for you two because of those stupid contests. We get to take a vacation and just forget it all for a while."

"But do you have to do it at the same time?" Sonny asked. He grabbed a chair and pulled it over, taking a seat between them. Jason remained standing. "Look, it's fine. You're right. You two did amazing work over the past few months. But do you have to take a vacation at the same time? We need at least one computer person on call at all times."

Jason cleared his throat and Sonny winced, realizing his slip.

"Oh, yeah. Um…you probably want to know who won the challenges."

Spinelli nodded. "We have a pretty good idea."

"Elizabeth did better at a few more of them than you did," Sonny explained, suspicious of how well the boy was taking it. "So in all fairness…"

"I know."

"…But we still appreciate all the work you put into it."

"That's very kind of you, Mister Corinthos Sir."

Elizabeth, taking pity on Sonny, giggled to herself. "Did you guys know that when Spinelli first realized that I totally kicked his ass, he was all mopey for weeks because he thought you'd kick him out on his butt?"

Sonny and Jason both stared at him. "…You thought that?"

Spinelli shrugged. "Maybe."

Jason frowned, leaning forward just a little. "Seriously? You thought we'd just kick you out?"

He shrugged again. "I don't know."

"Spinelli, we wouldn't do that," Sonny assured him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "So what if you didn't win? We'd never kick you out. We don't do that to one of our own. Hell, why do you think Max is still here?"

"Heard that," the guard called back.

"You're always going to have a place with us, Spinelli," Jason said seriously, and Elizabeth smiled up at him. "As long as you want it. We wouldn't want you anywhere else."

"It's because Jason loooooves you," Elizabeth cut in with a smile. She turned and elbowed her boyfriend. "Tell him you love him."

Jason glared.

"It's okay," she said, pretending to soothe him as she stroked his side, her grin widening. "Tell him. Just say it. It's okay."

"I don't-"

"Spinelli, Jason loves you," Elizabeth beamed, pushing him away when he tried to grab at her. "He tells me so all the time. It's enough to make a girl jealous, you know."

The boy's eyes widened. "Really?"

"What?" Jason looked at him like he had just sprouted two heads. "No."

His shoulders slumped. "Oh."

Elizabeth smacked Jason's butt with her palm, squealing when he made to tip her chair over. "Tell him you love him for real now! Look, you made him all sad."

"Elizabeth, for the love of God-"

"Tell him, tell him, tell him!"

Sonny rolled his eyes at her chanting. "Can you two calm down for a minute? We have something we need to discuss with you."

Jason had managed to displace Elizabeth and now sat in her seat. Not to be outdone, the brunette shoved his hands away and crawled into his lap. Jason didn't seem to mind.

"About the challenges…" Sonny cleared his throat. "It's true that Elizabeth did better. In all fairness, she should have the job. But Jason and I had some time to talk about it while we were in Costa Rica and we decided…"

He looked around their little group. "Well, we decided that the two of you really do work better when you work together. Remember those joint challenges that Stan came up with? You guys finished those faster than you finished the individual ones, and according to Stan, the codes for those were always a little more solid than the ones you did on your own. So Jason and I got to thinking…why not keep you both on?"

Spinelli and Elizabeth stared at him. "…What?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "You guys make a great team. This incident just now, it proved that. You kept your heads down, you got the job done, and it was flawless. You even had us going for a while. It was airtight, and you two did it together. We need that kind of determination and efficiency in the organization."

"So we want to formally offer both of you the position of our in-house computer expert," Jason said. "It's a paid position, obviously, and we'd retain both of your services for the organization."

Elizabeth and Spinelli looked at each other, then turned sympathetic faces toward their hopeful employers.

"Actually…" Spinelli started.

"You see…" Elizabeth said at the same time, patting Jason's arm.

"We regret to inform you that we cannot accept the position you're offering us."

Sonny and Jason looked at each other, then at them. "…What?"

"We just feel that it wouldn't be prudent to accept that position at this time," Elizabeth said sweetly, curling pieces of Jason's hair in her fingers.

"But we would like to thank you for the offer," Spinelli told Sonny, "and we'll keep your information on file in case our circumstances change in the future."

"Until then, we'd just like to thank you for your interest and your eagerness-"

"Okay, okay, stop reciting the form letter," Sonny ordered, "and tell us what the hell you're talking about."

"We can't take the job," Elizabeth said simply.

"Why not?" Jason wanted to know. "You've both wanted this job. You've been fighting about it since day one. And we finally figured out a way to make you both happy-"

"Even though _I_ should have won fair and square and solo," she pointed out, making him roll his eyes.

"We can't take the job because the Dragon and I got another one," Spinelli announced. "Or at least, we soon will."

"…What are you saying? What are you going to do?"

"We've been talking for the past few days," he explained, looking at Elizabeth, "and we've been thinking, why work for you guys and do just mobular things when we can open up our own agency and take on accounts for the whole town? We could offer our services to everybody, and things would work out great."

"And we'd have so much fun doing different things," Elizabeth added. "Because of the Webbers, I can probably land us some work at the hospital. Jax and Nikolas have expressed an interest in what we do, and they know that Spinelli's really good, too. And we've made other contacts throughout town, too. It'd be great."

"We'd be like techie private eyes," Spinelli beamed. "Whenever people have computer problems, it's like, who you gonna call? Jackal and Dragon!"

"We're still working on the name."

"We should get it to be similar to Ghost Busters. Who you gonna call? Nerd…clusters. I don't know."

She rolled her eyes. "Like I said, we're still working on the name."

Sonny wasn't liking this one bit. "If you two are going to be Nerd Cluster Ghost Busters, then what the hell are we supposed to do? You're leaving us with nothing – you can't do that."

"We already have a solution, Mister Corinthos Sir," Spinelli informed him happily.

"Yup," Elizabeth agreed. "And his name is Stan."

Sonny and Jason blinked. "…Stan? Our Stan?"

They nodded.

"But he's our surveillance man," Jason explained as if they were five. "He handles the cameras and the bugs and works with me on recon."

"Which is why he's perfect for the job," Spinelli replied patiently. "Look, with Stan, you'll get the whole deal. He knows all about the cameras and bugs, like we do. But unlike us, he knows the super technical details _and_ he can make them like no one else."

"And he does real good work, too," Elizabeth added. "I mean, you and Spinelli still haven't found the bug I put in your penthouse when you first moved in and kicked me out."

Both men glared at her. Sonny rubbed his forehead, knowing it was pointless to even interject or attempt to mediate.

"Plus, he knows all about computers. He was the one that came up with our challenges."

"She's right," Spinelli agreed. "He created the problems we worked through. Sure, he had to do a little research to get it right, but me and the Dragon are thinking we'll work with him for a few months or whatever until he's in tip-top shape, then we'll leave everything to him."

"And he's been working for you guys for years," she said. "He used to do some of the computer stuff before you took me in, and the only reason he never advanced higher that way was because I turned out to be so good at it, and he just stuck with his cameras and gadgets. And besides, it would be dumb of you guys to keep me _and_ Spinelli on for a job that Stan can do perfectly on his own."

"We haven't talked to him yet, obviously." Spinelli didn't even mind when Jason reached for his rum and juice, to finish it. "But we both have the sense, through our random conversations with him, that he'd really like to do this kind of work for you. We're sure that if we put it to him, he'd agree."

"And then once we're all convinced he's ready, he'll take over and we'll bow out and start our agency."

"Nerd Clusters."

Elizabeth pounded her fist on the table. "Oh, my God, we are so not calling it that!"

Jason and Sonny looked at each other, mulling all this over, and Sonny shrugged weakly. "You know, the only thing more disconcerting than losing the two of them from the organization is the idea of the two of them sharing a confined office space."

Spinelli chortled at that. "We'll be a couple of -"

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed. "If you say 'clustered nerds,' I am going to destroy you in every way."


	60. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

_Six months later…_

Damien Spinelli bounced along happily to the music in his head as he rode the elevator up to his floor. Things couldn't have been better. He was back in school at Sonny and Jason's insistence, and doing pretty well. He was making good grades and made a couple friends, even though he wasn't all that involved in campus activities.

That was because he wanted to be sure he had plenty of time for his real true love, the computer-detective agency he'd started with his partner in crime, _Nerd Clusters_. Elizabeth had caved on the name, so long as their business cards, fliers, and placards all included the tagline, _who you gonna call?_ just so people wouldn't think they'd completely lost their minds.

It was absolutely heaven, and certainly the best job he could have ever imagined. Sometimes, Spinelli found himself thinking back on all those jobs he'd applied for when he was afraid of being tossed out onto the street, and had to laugh. Those were all crapshoots compared to this. He could never have been happy at any of those places. And even though the first few months of Nerd Clusters had been scary, since they had no idea if they'd sink or swim, they had been the most exciting, fulfilling, and happy ones of his life. He couldn't imagine doing anything else.

Plus, he got to work with the Dragon every day. They got up at around the same time, had breakfast at Mister Corinthos Sir's, then went to the office. They worked for a bit and then he had to split for class. When he came back, he helped out some more and then they went home at five on the dot. He did his homework before dinner, sometimes getting help from Elizabeth if he had a really large workload, and was in bed at a reasonable hour.

Jason had even remarked that he was proud of him for being so disciplined, but he drew the line at writing it down on paper and letting Spinelli notarize it for authenticity purposes.

They all had their comfortable routine now: he and Elizabeth worked, he went to class, Stone Cold and Mister Corinthos Sir did their work, and Stan the Night Ninja fulfilled the organization's every technological need.

Things had come together in the best possible way, and Spinelli couldn't have been happier. He really felt at home in Port Charles for the first time in…ever. He had friends beside Stone Cold and the Dragon, he often hung out with the Silent Sentinels at Jake's and had gotten pretty good at pool thanks to their lessons, he had friends at PCU that were just as nerdy as he was (even though he was still Nerd Supreme, no two ways about it), he had gained some weight and started working out so as to be more successful with the ladies, and for the first time in a very long time he felt comfortable in his own skin.

And what was more, he felt like he really found his place in the family, however unconventional it was. He enjoyed hijinks with the Dragon, he enjoyed learning things from Stone Cold, and he enjoyed being cared for by Mister Corinthos Sir, even though all Sonny really knew how to do was medicate those he loved with food.

Spinelli laughed to himself, thinking about how worried he once was that he'd come home randomly and find that Stone Cold, having clearly picked the Dragon over him, had thrown all of his shit out into the hallway and expected him to go live somewhere else. Oh, God, that was just plain nuts now that he thought about it.

He let out a happy sigh as the elevator doors opened, and stepped out into the hall. But what he saw there instantly killed his mood and he could only gape at what was happening in front of him.

The door to the penthouse he shared with Stone Cold was wide open…and there were a whole bunch of suitcases sitting in front of the door.

Okay, okay, maybe this wasn't so bad. It didn't mean anything necessarily. Maybe Stone Cold just bought some new luggage.

Sonny, who appeared in the doorway of his own penthouse to talk to Max, pointed at the suitcases. "That's your stuff, Spinelli."

The boy gulped. Okay, okay, maybe this wasn't so bad.

His gaze traveled higher. Stone Cold, his beloved, compassionate, generous mentor that would never kick anyone out on their butt, however ample, stood in the doorway of the penthouse they shared. His arms were wrapped around the Dragon and the two of them were – oh, gross, they were totally making out. Nasty.

Jason nipped her lip and happened to glance over at Spinelli for a second before leaning in to kiss her again.

Okay, okay, this wasn't so bad. It didn't mean anything necessarily. Stone Cold always went a little stupid when he was swapping spit with the Dragon, and he became a little impervious to the Jackal's constant awesomeness, but that was okay, it didn't mean…

Jason reluctantly pulled away from his girlfriend and, looking at Spinelli, gestured to the suitcases. "You have to go live somewhere else."

Oh, God.

Oh, no.

Bile rose in his throat and Spinelli looked around at Sonny, Max, Jason, and Elizabeth, none of whom seemed too concerned about his plight.

"But-but-but…" He flapped his mouth open and shut. "What? No! You can't just kick me out! Just because I don't sleep with you like the Dragon does, and just because technically she's cuter and smells nicer and has been here longer, that's no reason to toss me out on my ass! This can't be how it ends! This can't be how the legendary duo of Stone Cold and the Jackal part ways! It's an ending so contrived, it'd make even Stan Lee blush!"

"Spinelli, calm down," Jason ordered, one hand resting rather ostentatiously on the Dragon's bottom. Spinelli distrusted his words instantly: Stone Cold always seemed to have trouble thinking straight and articulating himself when his hand was anywhere near the Dragon's bottom.

Ooh. Gross.

"Everything's fine."

Spinelli frowned at him, snapping out of it only when Sonny came up behind him and dropped a hand on his shoulder.

"Yeah, you're not going anywhere," he agreed, and Spinelli actually started to believe him. At least he wasn't sometimes useless like Stone Cold was. "We're just making some changes."

Uh-oh, there was that bile again.

"You're moving out of Jason's penthouse-"

"My penthouse," Elizabeth corrected acerbically.

Sonny ignored her. "You're moving out of Jason's penthouse and into the one Elizabeth was using. You'll have it all to yourself, because I think those two want to move in together or…something. I don't know, I try not to listen when they talk about that sort of thing."

Spinelli let out a whooshing breath. "Oh, are you serious? Oh, thank God, oh, that's awesome – wait, they're moving in together?"

Sonny grimaced. "I don't want to think about it any more than you do."

Spinelli held out his fist for a pound, which Sonny amazingly obliged. "Amen to that, brother. The less we know, the better."

He glanced over his shoulder at the couple that still insisted on making out in the doorway where everyone could see them. "Are you two really moving in together?"

"Yes," Jason got out around Elizabeth's lips. "Now get your stuff out of here."

"You're seriously going to move in with her?" He just couldn't wrap his head around it. "But she's insane."

"Hey. I'll equalize you, nerd."

"But she is," he insisted. "She leaves her things everywhere and she's hyperactive and she'll eat all your food and – and, oh! Oh! She still has that bug in the penthouse, Stone Cold, did you forget that?"

Jason frowned and looked down at her, and Elizabeth shrugged.

"Oh, yeah, I almost forgot about that thing…"

He wasn't amused. "You wanna get rid of it?"

"Fine." She untangled herself from his embrace and the men watched as she walked into the penthouse. They were all eager to see where she hid the bug, and Spinelli and Jason scowled when she took the information plate off the wall from right under the thermostat.

"Are you _kidding_?"

"It was right in the open! How come we couldn't find that?"

"Because Stan's that good," she grinned, walking back over with the tiny camera plate. "Aren't you glad you hired him for the job?"

Elizabeth tossed the thin plate to Spinelli, who caught it easily, and once again wrapped her arms around Jason's neck as he pulled her close. "Wear it in good health, nerd."

He grumbled something uncomplimentary under his breath as Sonny waved Max forward. "Come on, let's get these bags to his new penthouse. Spinelli, come on."

"Be right there," he called, glancing at Stone Cold and the Dragon, who were once again fused at the lips. "I, uh, I just have to go get a few things from…um…under the floorboards."

Jason stopped and rolled his eyes. "For fuck's sake, Spin-"

Thankfully, Elizabeth cut him off by kissing him again, and Spinelli was able to slip around them and back into the penthouse. Making sure that they weren't looking, he pried the tiny camera from the back of the plate and pocketed the metal, then looked around the room.

Putting it back on the wall would be too easy, and putting it someplace like in the bricks around the fireplace would just be begging to get caught. He had to find a good place that neither the Dragon, Stone Cold, or Night Ninja would look.

The corner of his mouth curled up, and Spinelli had it. He crossed the room quickly and knelt by an end table. Glancing at Jason and Elizabeth one last time, he applied the little camera on the inside of the looped embellishments on Elizabeth's monkey lamp, the one she'd already moved into what used to be her penthouse.

Satisfied with his work, he stood up and made his way back over to the door. He jostled Elizabeth accidentally as he was leaving, causing her to reach out and smack him.

"Watch it, nerd."

"Oh, I will," he promised, meaning it. He grabbed the last of his luggage and followed Sonny and Max across the hall to his new place, muttering under his breath, "Stupid Dragon."

**The End.**


End file.
